A Verse of Swords and Jewels
by A Dyslexic Writer
Summary: The followers of R'hllor had long searched for their lord's champion, the one who would sit on the throne of swords. Well, who better than to sit on a throne of swords than a man who is made of them? Hell, he's already acquainted with the princess. To bad neither of them actually wants the throne. They just want to convince everyone to stop killing each other.
1. Chapter 1

**I own nothing and I make no money off writing.**

* * *

Queen Cersei Lannister screamed.

Her screams of pain echoed throughout King's Landing as she went through what had to be the worst pain imaginable.

She was giving birth.

No, not only was she giving birth, but she was giving birth to the child of 'that man'. That horrible excuse for a King who she had married. That man who had never loved her and who had always carried a torch for a Stark, long after the wolf bitch's death. A man who drank and whored most of his day, right in front of his wife's face.

She didn't want to have this baby. She had never wanted to have it, and because of that, she had tried to take measures to make sure that the creature that had grown from that bastard's seed had never tasted its first breath.

She had tried everything from injuries, to starvation, to even poisoning herself to the point where she feared for her own life. Anything to halt the growth of the worm that was crawling around inside of her. But no mater what she did, it didn't seem to matter. Her pregnancy had preceded without any sign of complications. If anything, it had moved along faster than normal.

And now, it seemed as though the baby was getting its revenge. Punishing the mother who didn't want it. Causing the proud woman to cry out in pain.

"Breath Your Grace, you need to breath!" The midwife instructed the Queen, a Maester was standing close by in case of emergency, but it was considered ill luck to have any save a woman help during the birthing process.

"I know that! Now shut up before I have you quartaHHH!" The Queen's threat was cut off when the cramping became unbearable.

'May the Seven damn this child, and its disgusting father!' Cersei thought bitterly as she bit down on her lip until the soft pink flesh turned white. Several long horrible minutes dragged on as the queen prayed for the baby to just die. But no one answered her prayers.

It was with a mixture of relief and disgust that the Lannister heard the baby's first cries, strong and sharp. "Congratulations your Grace, she's a strong little girl." The midwife said, cleaning the crying babe of birthing fluids before holding the girl out for the mother.

Cersei didn't reach for her new born daughter. She just stared at it with wide eyes. The people around her were contributing it to the shock of birthing, but the queen's mind was a whirlpool of disbelief. The child was perfect. After everything she had done to try to rid herself of the parasite, it was a perfectly normal baby.

As the child was held out to her, the queen took notice of the girl's physical characteristics. She had small toffs of raven black hair, even darker than her father's, and the deepest topaz blue eyes that the woman had ever seen. All of them were characteristics of the father, King Robert Baratheon, only they seemed more intense in this baby girl. Even her skin was closer to the king's tanned complexion than the queen's pale beauty.

All of this worked together to convince Cersei of something that she had believed the moment she realized she was pregnant with that man's spawn.

This was not her child. This was Robert's child and not hers. It didn't matter if she had given birth to it, Cersei would never accept this baby as being her own. She was just glad that it turned out a girl, and so had only a weak claim to the throne.

"Come on, give her here! Let me have a look at her!" Robert said, practically pouncing on the midwife in order to wrestle away the girl. Robert had always been a massive man of nearly six and a half feet, and even if his last year as king had seen him slacking, he still had much of the build of a proud warrior. His bright blue eyes looked into the girl's even deeper blue, as he brought their two faces close together.

The baby stopped its crying and reached out with its hands, grabbing fistfuls of the man's beard, pulling on it any which way, causing Robert to burst out laughing. He brought up one hand to try to free his facial hair from the girl's grasp but was having some difficulties getting her to let go. "Already trying to manhandle me, are you? Strong and stubborn, just as a good Baratheon babe should be." The king laughed, kissing the baby's forehead, causing the child to give a sputter and start to try to push the man's face away. Cersei glared at the scene of the man playing with his 'first born daughter', with him seeming to have forgotten he had already produced a bastard one three years prior. Though the queen's displeasure was only fated to get worse. "Lyanna. That is going to be your name little one, Lyanna Baratheon."

Many faces in the room fell and people gave the queen worrying glances. After all, naming your wife's child after your former lover was a rather distasteful move. "Your Majesty, perhaps you should pick a different…" Jamie Lannister started, trying to keep his tone steady.

"She's my daughter and I will call her whatever pleases me!" Robert shouted at the man, seeming to momentarily forget that one wasn't supposed to shout in front of a new born baby. Though rather than being startled by the raised voice and starting to cry, the baby started to giggle at her father's shouts, making the giant stag even more pleased. "See, she likes the name, and dislikes you. Don't worry my little fawn, I can't stand your uncle either." Robert laughed, starting to bounce the baby up and down, to the horror of the midwife, who had to stop herself from shouting at the man when telling him to be gentle. He was the king after all, and not one to take being shouted at.

"Still you… your Ma… Majesty…" Grand Maester Pycelle started to mumble in his characteristic way, but the Queen cut him off.

"It's fine. It's his daughter. He can call it wasn't he wants." Cersei said, her voice cold, not that Robert noticed. He only had eyes for the new born girl. 'It is going to be the last true born child I will ever give you.'

* * *

"Lord of Light. Come to us in our darkness. Please, cast your light upon us. For the night is dark and full of terrors." The red priestess prayed again and again in High Valyrian to the alter of her god, R'hllor, the Lord of Light, while all the people around her shivered in fear. The woman, children and elderly of the shepherding village had all fleed into the church on the hill, hoping for some kind of miracle to save them from the Dothraki hoard that had pressed down upon them.

The three thousand horsemen my not have been the largest of hoards, but they were still more than the small village could stand up to. The man of the village, and the Red Priests who watched over the shrine to R'hllor, had gone off to battle, determined to at least make the Dothraki fight for it. But a mere sixty men wielding pitchforks does not stand a chance against an army.

The Red Priestess's words died on her tongue when the sound of hammering came from the barred wooden door. The common folk screamed in panic, climbing over each other in an attempt to get as far away from the door as possible.

Taunting laughter came from outside the wall along with shouts made in the Dothraki tongue, calls for a battering ram.

While the Dothraki weren't known to build siege weapons, carrying around a simple battering ram to break down the doors of the sanctuaries of the towns they seek to raid was common practice. It didn't take much to make the heavy oak doors rattle and the wooden plank barricade to start to splinter.

It took seven blows, but when the door finally gave way, bursting open, the Dothraki came pouring in.

The first of the savage men to make it through the door immediately set his eyes on the nearest woman, a young girl with braded brown hair. With a wide grin on his face he moved in on her, preparing to 'mount' her. He put his hands on her, ripping at her dress as he pushed her down to the ground. She screamed and thrashed against him, but he was to large and too strong for her, and no one was coming to help her. The horseman had her on the ground and was working at the tying around his own waist, lust burning in his eyes.

He never took her.

A blade whistled through the air, penetrating the man's heart and throwing him back down to the ground. Five other blades appeared in similar manners, each one flying through the air as if thrown by unseen hands and each one burying itself in the chest of one of the Dothraki raiders who had dared to touch one of the woman in the church.

Seeing this, the Dothraki stopped, eyes widening with surprise. The people of the town looked around, not daring to believe the miracle that was happening.

"My… my child." One of the women, a young girl of the village named Cymric, said, drawing the attention of others. In her hands was a bundled-up child, her new born baby, not five days old, too young to have even been named. The baby's hair was red as fresh blood, far darker than its mother's light orange hair.

Bright blue lines appeared on the child's skin, moving up the sides of its face and along one of its arms that it had held up outside of its blankets. The lines glowed with a strange light, and as they glowed more swords began to appear in the air above him.

Paying closer attention, the people watched as the outline of the blades were drawn with the same blue light, becoming clearer and more distinct until finally holding the same appearance as the real thing. Twelve blades shot through the air, flying at the Dothraki far to quickly for the horsemen to try to defend themselves, killing a dozen more in an instant.

One of the Dothraki, a blood-rider of this Hoard's Khal, cried out, pointing at the child and shouting at his men. Five of the remaining Dothraki, including the blood-rider, who had entered the church raised up their swords and threw them at the baby and his mother, trying to stop whatever magic was about.

Again, the swords made of light appeared, slashing the Dothraki blades out of the air before flying at the attackers, striking them died.

The remaining Dothraki fled, unwilling to face the magic that was at work. But even if they would not stay to claim their spoils, they would not leave a single soul alive. Torches were lit, and the church was set ablaze from the outside. It wasn't long before the entire building was in flames, the sound of the bellowing firing half masking the sound of the horses leaving the village.

The people inside of the building moved away from the walls looking to the only exit with fear, not only of the flames that surrounded it, but also if the men who might still be waiting outside.

But before the flames grew to a point were they would endanger the structural support of the building, something happened. Something that the people of the village would have a hard time explaining later.

They all 'heard' a voice. Though they couldn't tell weren't it came from, nor really how it sounded. Even so, the words echoed inside of them, though they could hardly explain what they meant.

 _ **I am the bone of my sword**_

 _ **Steel is my body and fire is my blood**_

One final sword appeared in the air, a massive blade as long as a man is tall with a handle that made it look like it had been meant to be wielded by giants.

 _ **Totsuga No Tsurugi!**_

The flames on the walls were pulled in towards the blade which seemed to drink them in. Within moments the fire had been put out and the sword glowed above them, the flames dancing along its surface.

"Lightbringer." Some of the Red Priestesses whispered as they all stared at the shining sword with wonder.

But after the fire was put out, the baby's hand dropped, the blue light that had shone on his skin disappeared and the swords that had been created began to slowly vanish, disappearing into specks of light.

Cymric looked down at her child with eyes full of wonder, noticing that a lock of his hair had changed from red to silver. His eyes, which had both been brown before where now two different colors, one the blight golden color of the sun while the other was the pale silver of the moon, making him as being something special.

Moments later, all of the women and children within the church were on their hands and knees, bowing down before the mother and child. They praised R'hllor, the Lord of Light, for rescuing them in their time of need.

The child was named Valorys, a child of fire.

* * *

 **Rin is a princess and Shirou becomes a religious icon.**

 **I'm not saying that I am writing a Song of Ice and Fire crossover, but if I was, this is how it would go down.**


	2. Chapter 2

Rin, or Lyanna Baratheon, groaned when she heard the rapid knocking at her door. "Go away!" She shouted, turning herself over and pressing her pillow down on top of her head. She didn't want to wake up yet. It was too damn early.

Sadly, it seemed like Septa Eglantine wasn't going to have it and entered her room anyways, along with two servant girls, pulling the sheets off of Rin's bed. "Princess, it is time for you to get up. You need to get ready to greet the new arrivals at court."

Like all of the women who had pledged themselves to becoming part of the clergy in worship to the Faith of the Seven, Septa Eglantine wore a wrapping around her head that covered everything save her face, which while unblemished and youthful, was rather plain, a face that could belong to any woman passed in the streets. Same could be said about the woman herself actually. Septa Eglantine was almost a caricature of a female born during the medieval times. This was probably the reason why Rin had such little patience for the woman.

"Don't care. I don't need to greet every Lord and Lady that comes to this stupid castle." Rin grumbled, still not wanting to get up.

"Milady, the Ser in question has come all this way just to meet you. It would be terribly inappropriate for you to not greet him." Septa Eglantine said sternly.

"Oh, right, another suitor." Rin said with a heavy sigh as she finally relinquished her pillow and started to sit up in bed, rubbing at her eyes. "I'd kill for some damn coffee." She said underneath her breath before stretching out her arms until her joints gave an audible pop, getting a flinch out of the septa. "So, who is it this time?"

She honestly didn't bother to keep track of all the people who had come to King's landing in search of her hand. Ever since she turned eleven, it seemed as though every unbound knight or lord who was between the ages of ten and fifty had tried they lot at winning her hand in marriage, much to her great annoyance.

It wasn't surprising. She was the oldest trueborn daughter of the King so courting her was an obvious political move in order to get closer to the royal family. Not only that, but in the recent years she had earned herself the reputation of being the goose that lays the golden eggs.

"Ser Wyllis Bracken." Septa Eglantine stated, trying to keep her disapproval out of her voice. Not that Rin didn't notice.

"Never heard of him." Rin said with a long yawn, turning her eyes towards one of the servant girls. "Would you go and fetch me some tea."

"Of course, Milady." The girl said, before bowing out to fetch the princess her morning's tea.

"He is the third brother of the current Lord of Stone Hedge castle, an up and coming knight who has performed admirably in past tourneys and..." Septa Eglantine stopped at the princess's snort of amusement.

"Another toy soldier? Don't call them knights when all they do is play pretend at my father's gloried game days. If they were knights then they would be volunteering to do something about the mountain raiders, not hanging around court in fancy clothes." Rin said as she pushed herself up out of bed and started to stretch. The remaining servant brought forward the dress that Rin was supposed to wear that day to meet with her would be suitor. It was a black gown with sunflower yellow sleeves, showing off the colors of house Baratheon. It was a pity that red was considered a Lannister color. Even if she didn't like her mother, she still wished that she could wear red without it seeming like she was trying to earn favor with the egocentric bitch.

Though in all honesty, she would have been happy to forgo the dresses all together. Uncomfortable things that were awkward to move around in. In her past life, she would have been willing to wear them on special occasions, but as a Princess she seemed to have to wear them every day, unless she is riding a horse, which came with its own discomfort.

"How old is he, nineteen?" Rin asked as the servant started to help her with the dress's ties.

"Twenty-seven." The septa said calmly, ignoring the gagging noise that her Princess made in disgust. Rin herself was only thirteen years old, and while it wasn't uncommon to marry someone older than yourself, marrying someone who more than double her age didn't leave her pleased. Not that she would have married the man anyways. It was hard to take any of these 'gallant' men seriously when he had known the real deal. Rin was not blind to the bloody truth of war, unlike the dozens of other young girls who filled the court day after day.

Even her father often joked that while some of them had skill, they were all just children playing pretend war, not knowing the real thing. Not that the King discouraged them, he thought that the 'Summer Knights' were amusing. He would just sooner trust the command of his armies to a court fool than to any of those so-called knights.

"I hope you realize that this is for the good of the Kingdom." Septa Eglantine said.

"The Kingdom won't be effected in the slightest whether I marry this man or not, and I would sooner join the ranks of the clergy than be married to someone I don't even care for." Rin said with certainty.

It was actually a popular belief in court that the Princess was going to end up joining the clergy. Ever since she was young, she had spent much of her time reading every sacred text she could get her hands on, seeming to have a fascination with the Faith of the Seven. None of the people in court realized her reason for reading these books. It had less to do with an interest in the Faith of the Seven and more to do with the need for the High Valyrian script.

It hadn't taken Rin long to realize that in this new world she was in, the God Odin had never existed, and therefore the runes that he had crafted held no magical properties. Neither did any of the sacraments of the Christian church, or any of the other languages that Rin had previously used as a median for her formula craft.

While this didn't leave her without any of her spells, she couldn't create the mystic codes needed to store her prana in jewels without the use of some kind of runic system. So, the young Baratheon had thrown herself full force into studying High Valyrian and the Greater Old Speech, two old dead languages that held the power that she required. It was only because the sacred texts were all written in High Valyrian that Rin had shown so much interest in them. She would have read the Red God's sacred scriptures, if she could have gotten her hands on them.

It was during her convening of these books that she found herself in need of the money to purchase them. It wasn't a new experience to Rin for her art to require her to obtain more money in order to continue her research, however it was something that she had to deal with. So she got together with her uncle Tyrion, who everyone referred to as 'the Imp', in order to remedy the situation. Many would have been hesitant to invest in a business idea put forward by a girl who was only eight years old, but Tyrion jumped on the opportunity. Whether this was because he had faith in the idea or because he wanted to cement is claim to the title of favorite uncle, did didn't matter.

Between the two of them, they put together this world's first printing press, using the mass production of books to gain the money that Rin required. Every time she would buy a book, she would arrange to have it mass produced, making back the money she spent on it and then some.

After a short while, she decided to expand her industry, recreating the spinning threading frames design that was used in the industrial revolution in order to mass produce cloth at roughly five hundred times the rate in which it was being made prior. Then she turned around and used the money from that in order to set up a system for producing salt on a massive scale. In the Medieval times, a pound of salt was worth more than a pound of gold, nearly twice as much. The money she made she would spend on her research materials, and all surplus would in turn go into creating more ways for them to earn money.

They even created a sanitation system for King's Landing to get rid of the smell from all the shit, as well as an aqueduct to help with the surrounding farm land. With the development of steam engine riverboats underway, the two had basically moved Westeros's technology forward roughly a thousand years and towards an industrial revolution, utterly crushing the competition in the marketplace.

Within five years Rin and her uncle were sitting on a fortune to rival many of the Greater Lords of Westeros, and one of every five working men in King's Landing and the surrounding countryside worked for the pair in one form or another. It was the first time in the history of the Seven Kingdoms that exports were exceeding imports, having a surplus of almost all basic goods.

It had come as something of a shock to everyone when Rin took her hands off the reins and left her uncle to manage all of the businesses, giving her more free time to do as she pleased. Though they all admitted in retrospect that it had been a very Baratheon thing to do, conquering the land and then leave someone else to take care of it all while you reap the rewards and indulge in various hobbies.

"Princess, what would you like us to do with your hair for today?" Septa Eglantine asked Rin as she was finished with her dress.

"Nothing special, just comb it. It would be a wasted effort to set it in a braid, since I will be taking part in martial exercises later today with father, just as soon as I can get rid of the hanger on." Rin said, pushing back her long black hair.

"And your bridal training and etiquette lessons?" Septa Eglantine asked.

"I already told you a hundred times. I know how to sew and dance, I don't need the practice, and screw etiquette. It's not like my father watches his manners." It was Rin's common response to being requested to do things that are proper for a Noble Lady. She demonstrates adequacy in the skill once, for show, before tossing it aside, saying that she is done with it. Then she would turn towards anything that interested her.

It had long been a sticking point between her and the Septa who served her family, along with her practice of sword play. All of her siblings had been made to focus on courtly studies and activities by their mother, but the Queen seemed to have less control over the eldest sibling. It didn't take a genius to tell that the two hated each other, though no one understood why. They all just assumed that it was because Rin refused to simply accept her role as a political pawn. They didn't realize the full scope of the issue.

Rin new damn well that her 'mother' attempted to force a miscarriage, only stopped by Rin's copious use of magecraft to reinforce the idea of the body and overwriting material imperfections, i.e. the poison. Though she didn't know why the Queen had done it, or why she hadn't tried it again with the later children. Or why she babied her younger siblings so much.

Rin had taken up sword play simply because it was the only martial art form that she was permitted to take part in. While she didn't see it as being helpful for her in particular, as in battle her magecraft was far more useful for her than slashes or kicks, a fit body was needed in order to maintain a healthy flow of od within her magic circuits.

Seeing her practicing, her father decided to 'give her pointers' and started to resume his own regiment, trying to stay one step ahead of his daughter. It was probably the only reason he wasn't the size of a whale, given the way he drank. Still, Rin always made sure to hold back whenever he was watching and to never use her reinforcement magic. It wouldn't do to hurt the man's feelings.

While Robert Baratheon wasn't a perfect King, like Arturia, he wasn't that bad of one. He kept the peace and didn't bully people just because he could. No, he wasn't revolutionizing the world, but he wasn't wrecking it either, though she supposed that his constant whoring and drinking was a bit unseemly. It reminded her of the stories she had heard about Alexander the Great, the King of Conquerors, during the Fourth Heaven's Feel. It just made him more relatable to the people, rather than making him a horrible king, which was why Rin accepted her new father, despite his faults.

She would admit that he could have cut back on the unnecessary expenses.

Even with the economy of Westeros on the upturn, the Crown was still managing to go into debt. Which was weird, considering that everyone was still paying their taxes and the amount of money Robert flaunted around with shouldn't have been more expensive than paying for a war.

It wasn't surprising that the debt started to climb after the war, with all the expenses of rebuilding the Seven Kingdoms, and the King cutting back all the taxes in order to help with the reconstruction. But even after the normal taxes were reinstated, the debt just kept climbing. It just didn't add up.

Rin had taken her concerns to the King's Hand, Jon Arryn, and the man had said he would look into it. Which was frankly the best that Rin could do unless she felt like using up her own valuable time looking into it all herself.

She cared, but she didn't care 'that' much.

It wasn't like the Kingdom's debt had any immediate consequences, and she could just fix things personally if need be.

Her dress on and hair brushed, Rin put on the only piece of jewelry that she hadn't canalized for materials, a necklace that her father had given to her that bore the visage of the Baratheon stag. She drank three cups of hot tea in order to wake herself the rest of the way up before allowing herself to be escorted out of the room. "Well, it is time to knock down another toy soldier."

* * *

"Illyrio, are you certain that these people are going to assist us." Viserys Targaryen questioned the Magister, narrowing his eyes in suspicion at the red robed figures they passed in the halls of the Red God, R'hllor. Illyrio Mopatis had brought Viserys and his sister, Daenerys, all the way from Pentos to Myr, the city of Craftsmen, in order to meet with an important figure from the Temple of the Lord of Light.

"I don't know, though the fact that they accepted our request for an audience is a good sign." Illyrio admitted, keeping his own eyes open. As slaves were not permitted within Myr's walls, the Magister had to go without his Unsullied bodyguards, making him uncomfortable. "It is well known that the worshippers of R'hllor desire to spread the teaching of their god, so if you offer to help spread their religion within the Seven Kingdoms, they may just give you the troops you need. R'hllor is one of the most widely spread religions in the known world. In this city alone, there are probably over ten thousand of worshippers who would answer their call to arms. Not to mention the Priest we are going to see is well known for his achievements in combat."

"Again, you go on about this so-called child of fire." Viserys scoffed.

"Ignore the stories about him if you wish, Your Highness. However, the worshippers of R'hllor still see him as the chosen champion of their god, so it would probably be best to keep such opinions private, especially in this city." Illyrio said nervously.

Daenerys stayed quiet, wishing, not for the first time, that she was back home. She knew exactly why Illyrio and Viserys had brought her along. Rumors had it that the priest was quite young and unhitched, and the Red Priests were not denied the pleasures of the flesh. She was to marry the man in order to secure an alliance.

Ever since she was nine, her brother had started trying to prepare her for the day that he would exchange her for his own army. With her silver hair and purple eyes, she was considered an exotic beauty, even if her sixteen-year-old body was a little under developed as a woman.

It scared her, hearing the stories of Valorys and how he single-handedly slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of bandits, pirates and Dothraki raiders. The way he seemed to wonder from battlefield to battlefield earning him the nickname 'the Blood Red Priest'. A swordsman without equal who simply could not be stopped. A man so brutal that even the Dothraki feared him.

As someone who was more familiar with the Maesters of the Faith of the Seven, Daenerys found it hard to believe that they would make such an individual a priest. Then again, if the tales of R'hllor's human sacrifices were more than just rumors, then perhaps she shouldn't be surprised at all. She should just be afraid.

One of the Red Priests met them at the alter and began to lead them deeper into the temple. As they walked they passed many of the Red Priestesses, each one a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties with the characteristic dark hair and eyes of the people of Myr, and all of them dressed in flowing red robes that were low cut to show off plentiful chests. Each time they passed one of them, Viserys's eyes would linger on them.

Even though she didn't swing that way, Daenerys would have admitted that the women were beautiful. Beautiful enough to make her feel self-conscious about her more childish body. But maybe that was a good thing. What would a man who was surrounded by such women see in a younger girl like her? Maybe she might just yet get out of this temple without being traded away to an insane man.

Daenerys had been threating over the encounter since they had first left port over a week prior in order to head for Myr. In her mind she had built up Valorys as a monster, equal to Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides; a massive brut, a rapist and a child murderer.

So, when she actually did meet him, it took her completely by surprise.

They small party had been led into a dining hall with a small table set up with a table cloth, chairs and a few plates of food. The set up seemed humble, but the food looked like it was fit for a king. The Priest who had lead them in left them with instructions to wait there before leaving.

Daenerys looked down at the food and felt a twist in her stomach. She didn't want to start eating without permission, lest she anger her brother by being a poor guest, but it all looked so good.

Before she could decide whether or not to risk it, a door opened at the other end of the room and a young boy appeared carrying a large loath of bread so fresh that was still steam. "Don't stand on ceremony, go ahead, take a seat and start eating." The boy said with a warm smile.

Daenerys couldn't hide her confusion as she looked the boy over. He couldn't have been more than thirteen years of age which made the way he spoke to them seem out of place. Like the other Red Priests, he was dressed in a red robe, however his robe wasn't nearly as well kept as the others, with its color faded and large rips and tears in the fabric revealing the black leather he wore underneath.

But the most remarkable thing about the boy was the strange coloration of his hair and eyes. While most of his hair was a dark red color, there was a large patch of hair that was as pure silver as Daenerys's own over his left eye, an eye that was also a cold silver color, even though his right eye was a warm gold.

Everything about the boy was so at odds with itself that it was rather disarming.

The boy put the bread down on the table before taking a seat and starting to move portions onto plates before noticing that the guests weren't sitting down. "Is something the matter?"

Viserys narrowed his eyes at the boy's casual manner. Luckily it was Illyrio who spoke first. "I'm sorry young man, but we are supposed to be here to meet with your master, Valorys. So please, go and inform him of our arrival." The boy cocked an eyebrow at Illyrio before starting to chuckle.

"Do you find something amusing, boy?" Viserys said angrily, having no patience for servants and even less for people who laughed in his presence.

"I just realized I should probably have introduced myself." The boy said with his gentle smile, seemingly unconcerned about Viserys's anger. He crossed a hand over his chest and gave a sort of half bow from his seat. "I am Valorys Emiya. It is a pleasure to make your acquittance."

Daenerys's eyes widened. This was the infamous Blood Red Priest? She had heard he was young, but she thought that meant young by war veteran standards. She had expected someone closer to her brother's age of twenty-two, but this boy seemed even younger than she herself was.

"Now, sit down and eat. You only arrived in Myr today, so you probably haven't had a good meal in a while. Hunger is the enemy and must be dealt with before other matters can be addressed."

* * *

Politics.

Christ, how much Shirou hated politics. Even after all these years he never got used to dealing with the blood sucking monsters that saw people as nothing more than numbers on a piece of paper, if they even cared that much about them, he still wasn't used to it. It seemed no matter where you were, or in what universe you where in, there was someone more concerned with reputation, gold, or power than they were with their own need to breathe.

By the time Valorys was old enough to speak, people were already trying to gain some kind of control over him, both believes in R'hllor and posers alike. He supposed that he should consider himself fortunate that the Red Priests won out over the nobles, as some of the men and women honestly seemed to believe that Shirou was the chosen champion of their god. Those who disagreed were not numerous enough to take open action, and their attempts to assassinate Shirou had all ended in catastrophic failure, ironically adding more 'proof' to the claim.

He had wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all when the elders of the temple started to ask him how to interpret their holy texts and the visions they received, as well as how they should conduct themselves as an organization, when he was only three years old. Though as time went on, Shirou had grown into the role little by little, becoming a key figure in a religion he didn't personally put any faith into, and one that was scary as hell. He always had to walk a fine line between shaping what the followers of the Lord of Light practices and not overtly challenging their beliefs. Convincing them that it was better to spread the teachings of R'hllor by protecting people than it was to simply flat out murder everyone who didn't agree with them.

A lifetime dealing with the church's Burial Squad had done little to prepare him for what he was having to deal with, as at least the exorcists had some understanding of how their miracles worked.

It hadn't taken Shirou long to realize that like Christianity in his old world, the focus of faith around the Lord of Light had actually changed the worship into a form of magecraft, with the Red Priests and Priestesses all acting as Hedge Mages, using mysteries that they don't even understand and declaring them to be the direct consequence of their God's will and proof that their actions are divine and just. Something that Shirou found extremely hard to swallow when he found a small group of them using the rituals to create shadow familiars by ripping the souls of nonbelievers out of their bodies as they were burned alive. He made sure no one got of that place alive to speak of their results. If the worshippers found out that it worked, that would have been good enough for them to prove that it was the right thing to do. God wouldn't have given them the power to do it if it wasn't what God wanted.

Then again, it wasn't clear that any of them would have stopped just because they realized they weren't doing the work of their god and were instead just murdering people for what amounted to personal gain. Human history wasn't pretty, with or without gods.

No, Shirou didn't have much faith in R'hllor, but even so, he did take everything to do with the religion very seriously, especially the visions.

A common theme in the worship of the Lord of Light was the act of looking into fires during one's prays. Through the repeated action, the worshipper can preform a spell which allows for insight into far away events, past occurrences, and on rare occasion, even vague glimpses of the future. And it was because of one of these prophecies that Shirou was in the situation he was in now, yet again dealing with politics.

Shirou had started to size up the Targaryen siblings since the moment he had walked in through the door. His impression of them might very well determine the course of history, and so far, his impressions were bad.

The brother, Viserys, was twenty-two years old, medium height with a pretty boy appearance. His 'mightier than thou' attituded was as obvious as the nose on his face. Something that Shirou had little tolerance for, even if he knew how to hide his own frustration. His silver hair and purple eyes were both products of his body not producing pigment in those areas, much like with any other albino, yet his skin was not pale enough for the Targaryen traits to be a simple case of albinism. Perhaps there was more to the stories about the Targaryen having the blood of dragons than just a bunch of hot air. Still, the man had no self-control, and was both unbloodied as a warrior and untested as a leader.

The sister, Daenerys, was about sixteen, a little on the short side with youthful features. Though her physical characteristics were much like her bothers, the way the girl carried herself couldn't have been more different. She seemed meek, scared even, her eyes constantly shifting around her, never staying in one place for too long or looking directly at anybody. Even the way she ate seemed uncertain, as if she both feared to eat it, worried that it might be poisoned, and to not eat it, lest she attract attention of those around her.

Shirou couldn't help but to wonder just what kind of life she had lived. Her birth would have occurred near the beginning of Robert's Rebellion, but she would probably have spent her whole life on the run, always looking over her shoulder, afraid to find a dagger waiting there for her. While Shirou couldn't condemn Robert Baratheon for trying to finish off the Targaryen family once and for all, as a measure to prevent future conflicts, he did pity the girl who was born into it.

Perhaps the fact that she looked much like an older Illya had something to do with that. He just hoped that the theme of abuse within the family wasn't the same.

It had taken a little to convince them to eat, but once they started he didn't hear any complaints out of them. Indeed, Viserys and Illyrio both ate and drank, hardly seeming to pay Shirou any mind at all.

In fact, Viserys didn't seem to notice his surroundings at all until he had drained his cup of wine and was looking to refill it. "Let me get that for you, Your Highness." One of the Red Priestesses who had entered the room after them said.

Shirou looked up from his own plate to see the woman leaning over the Prince's armrest, putting her body close up to his face, as she poured him another glass of wine. The boy had no control over the look of absolute hunger that passed over his face.

Shirou's expression twitched into a thrown. "You should be careful when dealing with the Red Priestesses, Prince Viserys." Shirou said flatly.

The Prince looked over at him, a glare twisting his features. "Was that a threat?"

"Not a threat, just a warning." Shirou said, glancing at the woman in question, a beautiful woman, with dark brown hair and green eyes, who appeared to be in the prime of her youth. The keyword there being 'appeared'. "The woman standing right next to you is High Priestess Quinna. She will be celebrating her eighty-seventh name's day this coming spring."

Viserys's face fell as he looked at the woman in a new light. Illyrio Mopatis, who had also been staring at the woman's breasts, choked on his vine. Even Daenerys gasped lightly, covering her mouth.

"Master Valorys, it is hardly appropriate to talk about a woman's age right in front of her." Quinna said with a twisted smile.

"It is also very inappropriate to use the power bestowed to you by the Lord of Light to try to seduce young men." Shirou countered without missing a step. "Most of the Red Priestesses use a form of magic we call glamours. It bends the light around them, allowing them to change their appearances. Apparently, it makes it easier to convince men to come to mass. I'll warn you again, be careful when dealing with the Red Priestesses. The illusion won't last if you take one of them to bed with you."

Viserys looked from Quinna to Shirou and then glared. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that horse tripe? You are trying to claim that your God gives you power, and are putting forward that as evidence? Don't make me laugh."

Quinna's eyes narrowed. The High Priestess had little tolerance for nonbelievers, though Shirou would not have allowed her to lash out at people about it, especially guests who they had invited into the temple.

"I see, you want a demonstration than." Shirou said, holding up his knife in clear view for the prince.

'Trace on. Loading blueprint. Recreating history. Abstracting enchantments. Reapplying method of creation. Alteration.'

Shirou focused his own prana into the knife, weaving into it the same sort of light bending enchantment that was used by Invisible Air, until right in front of the people's eyes, the image of the knife started to twist and bend before disappearing all together. Shirou then brought the knife down to his pork chops and cut off a strip, proving that the blade was still there, only unseen.

"Is that good enough for you?" Shirou said, letting the knife reappear as everyone stared in wonder, even the High Priestess.

In the eyes of the Priests and Priestesses, the fact that Shirou did not need to pray to the Lord of Light to receive his assistance was proof that he was blessed by R'hllor. They didn't understand the concept of a Magus. Shirou wouldn't have even said that turning the knife invisible was very impressive by his standards. Rin could have produced similar results, and she probably could have been able to do it in half the number of steps Shirou used, as well as half the cost in prana.

"Now that you are more open minded about what we have to offer, tell me a bit about yourself, your views on politics, your plans on how you were act when you reclaim your throne." Shirou said, putting down his silverware and putting his elbows up on the table, resting himself with his crossed hands covering his mouth as he looked Viserys right in the eyes. Hypnosis was not a skill that Shirou exceled at, but he was at least able to implant a suggestion within the man's mind. "Tell me the truth."

Over the course of a half hour, Viserys Targaryen did tell Shirou everything, long after Shirou dismissed the hypnosis and actually wanted the man to just shut up, he just kept going. He spoke of his hatreds and his twisted perception of the throne being his by right and that everyone else was just stepping stones for him, including his own sister. He spoke of his plans for vengeance against those who marched against his father and how he planned on killing their women and children in the same manner they used for dealing with his brother's wife and children. Whenever Shirou interjected to ask about his responsibilities to the common people, he laughed, saying that the common people held no value when compared to Royalty and that it was they who had duties to the crown, not the other way around. When Shirou asked him about his experience with leading and politics, the man said that he was born to be king, he didn't need experience or practice.

This man had no honor at all. He would be willing to sacrifice his family, his people and his gods in order to see himself sitting upon the throne, and he didn't even have the slightest understanding of what sitting on the throne even meant.

Once the interview was over, Shirou gave a tired sigh and looked over at the High Priestess who looked back at him expectantly. Shirou shook his head. "Viserys Targaryen, I have heard you out, and I cannot in good conscious provide you with any support." Shirou said, omitting any titles. The man looked as though he had been slapped in the face, but the first person to jump in was the High Priestess.

"Master Valorys, this is the Heir to the Targaryen name, the blood of the dragon. Even if he is not as we imagined him, he fits the description of the prophecy." Quinna said, glancing between Shirou and the confused and enraged Viserys.

"Prophecy? What prophecy?" Viserys exclaimed, but Shirou ignored him.

"On the surface, it might appear that way, but this boy is no warrior or leader. Just listen to the vile that comes spewing from his mouth. He is not the one who will unite the Seven Kingdoms against the coming darkness." Shirou said, getting up from the table.

"But… even if he isn't the idea ruler, he still holds the right to the throne." Quinna said, not wanting to give up just yet.

"So, you are suggesting that we conquer the Seven Kingdoms in his name and then control him as our puppet? The prophecy said that an heir to the throne would unite the Seven Kingdoms in order to stave off the Great Other, not that we would create a King that would do so. If anything, us supporting him might prevent the one the Lord of Light spoke of from ascending to the throne, and the war that would be required in order to force the people to accept this prick as their king would hardly leave enough people alive left to fight against the darkness." Shirou said, shooting the woman's suggestion down.

"Bu… Of course. You are right." Quinna's eyes were downcast with disappointment, but she didn't argue the point any further. He was right, the Prince would not do. "I suppose this was a waste of time then. I will call for one of the Fathers to escort them out."

"See to it." Shirou said, turning to head for the door.

"Hold it!" Viserys snarled, getting up from his seat and taking an aggressive step towards Shirou.

"My Prince, please calm y…" Illyrio tried to grab the young man's sleeve, but his hands were slapped aside.

"Is this some kind of joke!? What give you the right to judge whether or not I am worthy of my crown!? You are just a young bastard, not even old enough to have hair on your pubs, and you think you can judge me!" Viserys shouted at the High Priestess who narrowed her eyes at the insult to Shirou's honor.

"Master Valorys is the chosen champion of our Lord. He has held a seat as a High Priest in Myr since his sixth name's day and has worked to protect and guide our people. He knows far more about ruling than you ever well." Quinna said, her voice full of scorn for the young man.

"How dare you, you disgusting witch!?" Quinna staggered back in surprise as Viserys drew his sword. While she was powerful in her own right, that power relied on drawn out rituals. Against a normal blade, she bled as easily as anyone else. Viserys brought the sword around, attempting to preform a slash at the High Priest's neck.

The attack never reached its mark.

Daenerys gasped in shock when Shirou moved in between her brother and the Priestess with a speed that she could hardly follow with her eyes and grabbed onto the blade with his bare hands, as if it was a wooden stick rather than sharpened steel. Lines of blue light extended from his arm from underneath his robe and moved around his fingers.

"Let me make one thing clear to you, Prince. You are messing with forces that are far beyond you." Shirou said as he locked Viserys in place with a glare. A terrifying sense of danger filled the room, making the young boy seem far more threatening than he had been before and making the rumors of the Blood Red Priest much more believable. "Since you are a guest in our temple, I will forgive this one slight. However, if you ever again try to harm another person inside of this city." Viserys's steel blade shattered into piece, causing the Prince to stagger back holding only the stumped hilt of a sword. "I will grate you a swift death."

* * *

 **Due to surprisingly popular demand, I wrote another chapter of this.**

 **I was also asked to make it clear that anyone who thinks that this story is a good idea and wants to pick it up should feel free.**


	3. Chapter 3

King Robert and his small group of true friends, the few he had in the viper pit known as the royal court, all sat around the tables in a smaller private meeting room, a massive wine barrel had been opened up and they had sent away the help. Only two of the men from the King's Guard that Robert was sure enough weren't in the pockets of any of the other members of court were allowed to stay within earshot, left guarding the doors from the outside against prying ears.

Not that any of this was necessary. All they were doing was getting drunk and trading stories while laughing their asses off. But it was always funny to imagine the faces of all of the people outside as they bit their lips, wondering what kind of serious matters the King was going to such length to hide and how it would affect their own agendas. Throwing some fuel on the fire for those paranoid nutters.

Contrary to popular belief, Robert knew damn well about the 'Game of Thrones' and everyone trying to perform all kinds of power grabs to set themselves up as being closer to the throne. He just honestly didn't care. The only reason why his ass was on the throne in the first place was because the Sept wanted someone with Targaryen blood in them on the throne.

It actually irked him a little, the fact that he had been the one with the most Targaryen blood in him out of the Lord Paramounts who had rebelled, his grandmother being a Targaryen. Still, it wasn't like Eddard could have taken it, since the North had no other Stark because of those Dragon bastards, save for Ed's brother who had taken the Black and couldn't rule, and while Hoster Tully had a brother who was old enough to take over the Riverlands, the two of them had a falling out and the Old Fish would have rather died then let the Black Fish become the Lord of Riverrun. Not that Brynden would have wanted to anyways, given his blatant refusal to settle down and get married.

A mistake of history, that was how Robert viewed his own ascension to the throne. He was a general, good at war strategies, good at preparing his bannermen, and skilled with a weapon, but as it turned out, that hadn't made him any good at politics. He didn't understand why he should give a shit about who marries who, which Lord had the best claim to a river, or who was invited to what parties. Honestly, why does everything have to be political with these people? He couldn't even shake a man's hand without it being taken as a political statement. No one cared about all this stuff when he was the Lord Paramount of Storms End.

Yes, in the eyes of the nobles, Robert was a shit King. So what?

Robert had long ago stopped caring about what nobles thought about him. So long as he didn't give anyone reason to rebel, it wasn't like they could do anything about it. Without the backing of the smallfolk, no rebellion could possibly get off the ground, and the smallfolk don't give a damn about politics. He was the King now, but he wasn't about to change himself for anyone. So, Robert Baratheon just kept on being Robert Baratheon, only now with the influence of the crown to back him up.

The man didn't feel guilty about pushing responsibilities onto others at all. He did enough for the realm already, not only having fought to liberate it from the Dragons and protecting it from the Ironborn, but he also nobly sacrificed himself for it by marrying his cunt wife, Cersei Lannister.

Truly a sacrifice more worthy of song than any battle fought by man. Not even the fiercest of beasts could compare to spending day after day married to that passive aggressive woman. It was of little wonder that Robert turned to whores. At least they pretended to love him and didn't spit into every glass of wine they ever poured him.

Still, despite her best efforts, the woman had given Robert one thing.

"So after having questioned the man's masculinity in front of everyone, she challenges him to a sparing match to prove himself, making him bet twenty golden dragons over it." Tyrion said, recounting the days actions of Robert's high-spirited daughter. Tyrion had managed to worm his way into Robert's inner circle, through a mixture of the Imp's friendly relationship with Lyanna and the fact that he was somehow even more hated by Cersei than Robert himself, an impressive feat. "The finishing blow landed right between the legs, leaving the poor man to hobble off of the field to face his shame." Tyrion laughed, taking a long drink of his wine before finishing. "She attacked his manhood in more ways than one. Not only that, but the poor bastard lost all of his coin, so he can't even buy a whore to kiss it and make him feel better."

The group laughed, shaking their heads and voicing their pity for the foolish Lord, with the Red Priest Thoros going so far as acting as if he was doing a little prayer.

"Poor fellow. Though even if he by some miracle managed to get close to our niece, he would have then had to deal with her father." Renly said, glancing over at his brother with a smirk, earning a snort out of the man.

While Robert Baratheon couldn't do much to stop young unmarried Lords from coming to King's Landing, that didn't mean that he liked them trying to win his daughter's favor. It had taken a good deal of work from both Jon Arryn and Renly to talk Robert out of grabbing his Warhammer when he first received word of the Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell, had been seen attempting to flirt with his daughter after a tourney. Lucky for the boy, Renly shifted the blame from Loras himself to his family, saying that they instructed him to try to win her favor and that he couldn't disobey them because of his code of honor.

It was only that which saved the young knight's life. Well, that, and the fact that Lyanna's blatant lack of interest. It was actually quite surprising, considering how most girls had been practically drooling over the young knight, but the princess was just not interested. Loras backed off gracefully and simply maintained a friendly relationship with the Royal family through Renly.

While he was the first, Loras was by no means the last. Noble son after noble son came, trying their luck at winning the girl's favor before seeking the father's permission. Robert was told by his advisers that this kind of thing was normal when there was a princess who was approaching marrying age and was as of yet unengaged. It was only made worse by the fact that his daughter had turned out a genius to put the maester to shame, with a strong head for business, making her an even more valuable asset to any family. The entire thing seemed bizarre as hell to him. He still viewed marriage as something that people should do after having a chance to find themselves. He himself wasn't even first engaged until much later in his life. At the end of his famed rebellion, Robert and his cunt wife had been approaching their third decade and had still been unmarried.

Such a thing stops being the case when you are wrapped up in the Game of Thrones. Marriage became an even more important political tool. One that is used whenever necessary rather than once one is ready.

Robert should probably have just considered himself lucky that the Lannisters didn't have any targets in mind for which to use Lyanna's hand with. Besides Loras himself, there was no one of even close to appropriate age and rank for a political marriage to the Princess outside of the Riverlands and the North, both of which were already loyal enough to the throne for a political marriage to be unnecessary, at least as long as Robert was still alive. It would be Joffrey's hand that would have to redo those bonds. Which meant that so long as she eventually picked someone from Reach, the Vale or Darne, they didn't care.

Robert hated it. But as much as he hated it, he couldn't help but draw amusement from it as he saw his daughter's disregard for those sent to try to win her eye turn to annoyance and finally a sort of vindictive fury worthy of Baratheon family moto.

Just like her father, while she was capable of playing nice, the girl's patience was very finite, and when someone annoyed her, she had her own way of letting the whole world know. Smart as she was, she didn't act anything like her mother. None of that cloak and dagger, clever clogs, will show you in the long run stuff that the Lannisters were known for. Direct, public and as brutal as a Warhammer to the face. Just like how her old man would do it, even if her way with words was better than his. It never failed to make him feel proud.

Robert Baratheon had adored his oldest daughter from the day she had been born. She was spirited, intelligent, and active. She brushed off many of the more traditional braids training duties in favor of learning about combat, organizing and commanding troops on the march, tactics in individual battles and strategies used for the big picture in war, as well as her general studies where she attempted to gather every scrap of knowledge she could someday be useful. While she did act high and mighty, she never treated anyone as if they were too far beneath her for her notice. Everyone from her father down to the lowest servants were treated with kind words until they made her angry, save for her mother, grandfather and the less honorable lords and knights.

Neither her younger brothers, nor her sister, were anything like Robert, much to the King's disappointment. Robert's first-born son, Joffrey, was lazy, arrogant and spiteful, hardly putting any of the energy or passion that the Baratheons were known for into anything and was always as smug as his asshole uncle Jamie. The boy seemed to have this stupid idea that him being the crowned prince meant that he was somehow untouchable. Such an attitude pissed Robert right off, the way the boy thought he was so damn clever when everyone around him knew he was a piece of shit, save for his mother who willfully ignored that fact.

While Lyanna was her father's daughter, Joffrey seemed to have inherited purely the mother's traits.

As for the other two siblings, it wasn't all bad. Tommen was extremely young and hugged onto his mother's skirt a little much for Robert's liking, but the boy seemed to have dreams of being a knight. It wasn't much but it was a start. Myrcella was a quiet and gentle girl, with the normal girly thoughts and girly dreams. She didn't really like her father too much, as Robert didn't fit her fantasy stories about what a king should be like. The man supposed he couldn't fault her or the mother for that. That was society's retardation in not accurately depicting war and the duty of nobles.

While they both took after their mother in looks, neither one of them acted anything like either parent.

Robert supposed he should have just been glad about the fact that he had some good-looking and healthy children, as his brother Stannis was plagued with miscarriages and his only daughter had a face like a horse and brains to match, the poor girl. It was just that none of his later children seemed right to the stag king, especially Joffrey.

Lyanna was by far her father's favorite, which was why he hated the fact that the noble houses were looking for her hand, while he hardly cared about Joffrey's marriage proposals, even though he was the heir and his wife would one day be queen. Robert knew that once she got married, she would go to live with her husband, probably somewhere far away from King's Landing.

"You know Robert, it's not going to end. Not until you arrange for the girl to have a fiancé." Tyrion said, giving the man a sideways glance. He forgoed the man's title, as addressing him as such annoyed him when they were all behind closed doors and properly drunk.

Robert groaned at the Imp's words. "Please, none of that here. I get enough of that crap from Jon on a daily basis."

"Speaking of Jon, where is the old man?" Renly asked, looking up from his wine. "I didn't see him at the small council meeting."

"Man was bed ridden to day with a fever. The maesters said it was a minor thing and that he should be back on his feet in a day or two. He's just getting on in years." Robert said with a slight shake of the head, visibly saddened at the news that the man who had been like a second father to him wasn't as youthful as he had once been. "I probably should let him go back to Vale and find myself a new Hand. He's not getting any younger and I'd hate for this job to be the death of him."

"I see. I'll have to check in on him." Renly said with a short nod. Jon was considered to be a valued member of the Baratheon family after everything he had done for them. "As for what the Imp said, he has a point." Robert gave his younger brother a glare.

"It doesn't have to be real. You just need to have some Lord's brat that you can point to and say that our Princess is currently in a trial engagement with that boy, then later on you can just say that it wasn't working out and call it off." Tyrion said.

"Don't bring Lannister logic into this. You know how much I hate political subterfuge." Robert grumbled, but he had already had a few more cups than needed to loosen his lips. "Which noble house would even be willing to put up with such a thing, and what would I do if she actually fell for whatever bastard we picked?"

"Hm, don't know." Renly said. Neither of the men was going to question Robert as to why it would be a bad thing if little Lyanna Baratheon fell in love. "I don't think there is much of a chance of that happening though. I think that Lyanna just isn't interested in men."

"What do you mean by that?" Robert asked, his mind refusing to register what the man was implying.

"Well… her eyes just seem to tend to linger longer of the women in court than the do on the men. Especially the ones in the low-cut dresses." Renly said, looking away from his brother as he said so. "Lyanna might simply be more into girls than she is with boys."

Tyrion looked up at the King's gawking face, his mouth flapping open wordlessly. "Girl takes after her father a little too much." The Imp said in a completely flat voice, earning himself a punch to the shoulder that caused him to nearly fall out of his chair. Tyrion took the hit in stride, laughing as he straightened himself up. "Well, if true, then there is nothing we have to worry about. She wouldn't go for the boy anyways." Tyrion reasoned. "Tomorrow, Lyanna and I are supposed to be heading up to the Arbor for the launching of the new riverboats."

"Oh, so that steam mill boat thing that the two of you cooked up actually works?" Renly said with a raised brow. He had been skeptical of the entire thing. The idea of turning a mill's turbines with steam from boiled water seemed farfetched to him.

"We'll have to find out now, won't we?" Tyrion said with a smirk. He had looked over all of the design pages for the new riverboats and if everything ran smoothly, it should work just fine, as long as the fire was controlled properly. While no one had ever done anything like it before, that was the case with many of the things that Lyanna suggested. If it did work, then riverboats would be able to travel upstream without the need for a massive crew rowing throughout the trip, or teams of oxen or horses pulling them from the shower line. "The point is, Lord Redwyne has a grandson, one too young to even start to feel the stirrings of manhood. We might be able to get the shriveled old grape into playing along and pretending they are engaged."

"With how sacred that Sour Old Whiner treats marriage agreements? Not a chance in hell." Robert said with a snort, shaking his head.

"You mistake ambition for honor. He wants people to stick to their marriage alliances because that helps him in his own political game, but because he believes it is honorable." Tyrion said pointedly. "He'd go for it if he believes that there's an actual chance of something coming out of it. You'd be surprised how far people would go to get a foot in the door with the Princess. Why do you think he offered his ship builders to help her with her project?"

Actually, both the Arbor and Riverrun had practically been climbing over each other to be the ones to be part of the riverboat project. It was both a means of furthering their political ties with the royal family, and a way to make serious profits off of the innovation to their inland ships.

"It's at least worth a try, don't you think?" Renly said, checking to see if his brother would burst into one of his fits of rage. It was actually a good idea, and even if by some miracle Lyanna actually did take a liking to the Redwyne boy, it would have been a pretty good arrangement.

The Redwynes weren't the most influential family in the Reach, do to the 'Queen of Thorns' being a Redwyne before she stole her own sister's betrothed in order to marry into House Tyrell, ironically creating a rift between the family and their Lord Paramounts rather than connecting the two families. Still they were wealthy and could field as many soldiers as any other house and held their own fleet of war ships.

Robert didn't look happy, but finally gave a groan of discontent. "If Lyanna's fine with the idea… I suppose. But if this blows up, I swear I will have your head for this." The King said, pointing at Tyrion with one of his massive fingers.

"Then I best hope that things don't go badly. I can hardly afford to lose the inches." Tyrion joked, as he finished off his cup of wine and pushed himself off of his seat, landing surprisingly gracefully on his feet, considering the sheer quantity of alcohol he had just consumed in comparison to his stature, as well as his slightly uneven body which made him walk with a slight limp at the best of times. "Well then, I really ought be getting to a warm bed. Preferably one with a nice whore in it. I'll be on the ocean for a few days and I should take care of my needs before I go."

"You do that." Renly said, frowning slightly with disapproval even as his elder brother laughed and waved the dwarf off.

* * *

Illyrio walked through the streets of Myr back towards his ship. He had arranged to stay at an inn during their time in the city of craftsmen, but after everything that happened, he wanted to be able to leave town as quickly as necessary if things went bad. Or at the very least, get the Prince and Princess out of there. So long as Illyrio himself wasn't with them, the merchant prince was safe enough, as his presence in the city wasn't anything remarkable. Which was why he had left the siblings back on the ship as he went out trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Though Valorys had apparently shown them mercy in not killing the idiot Prince for his transgressions, Illyrio was weary about believing it. Killing Viserys would have been a politically unsound move, as no one would have witnessed his attack on the Red Priestess and rumors of the Priest killing a guest out of term might have popped up.

However, after letting them go, news of the Prince's actions and the boy Priest's mercy slowly spread across the city. Illyrio found his fellow merchants much less willing to haggle with him over the goods he had brought to the city. He overheard angry voices in the street, speaking about the gall of the Targaryen Prince in attacking the High Priestess after having broken bread with them, saying that the mercy they were shown was too good for them.

None of the smallfolk knew where the Prince and Princess were and didn't care enough to actually form a mob, but as word spread, the danger to them spread as well. The faithful might have respected the declaration of mercy for now but given time they might explode. Even the slightest transgression on their part could bring the entire city down on their heads. If one of the Targaryen siblings so much as brushed up against someone in the street, they would all be dead, and given Viserys's temper, this was a very big threat. Illyrio had little doubt that this had been the effect that Valorys had been going for all along.

The man had attempted to add to the collection of mercenaries that he had hired to act as bodyguards in the place of the unsullied he had been made to leave behind do to the city's strict antislavery laws. While there were antislavery laws in most of the Free Cities, they usually were just ignored by the wealthy who simply stopped using the word slaved to describe their slaves. However, that shit didn't fly in Myr.

Not only did the mercenaries he had tried to add turn him down, regardless the amount of money he offered them, the ones he already had found out what had happened and had all jumped ship, saying they wanted nothing to do with anything involving the Blood Red Priest.

While Illyrio hated their unprofessional manner, leaving after already receiving the down payment, he couldn't really hold it against them, not after having met the Blood Red Priest in person. Those last moments, right after Viserys's foolish move against the Priestess, they had nearly given Illyrio a heart attack. The mercenary group's leader had said that he wouldn't throw his men's lives away in a hopeless battle before telling Illyrio a few stories of the things that Valorys had done to mercenary groups in the past when they preformed jobs that he had deemed immoral. Entire regiments worth of freemen that had survived dozens of full-fledged wars were left too crippled to continue to function by a single young boy.

While a normal Priest might ostracize a man or group for wrong doing, or perhaps urge the people to take action, the Red God's chosen messenger simply took matters into his own hands. Despite his youth, his skills in battle had been seen many times within the city. The corrupt upper-class, pirates, gangs, any sort of organized crime had been beaten out of Myr. Even the other Priests within his temple were not immune.

Before he had only half believed such stories and believed that they were about a much older individual. Now though, after being showing his strange powers and watching him shatter a sharpened blade with his bare hands, he didn't doubt anything anymore.

It led to the Red Priest being seen as the champion of the smallfolk, as he kept the wealthy from abusing their power over them and had all but put a stop to the thievery and killing that often-characterized larger cities. However, to the upper-class, the was someone to be feared and avoided at all costs.

Illyrio had never been a god-fearing man, worshipping the almighty coin more than any deity, but after the things he had seen and the things he had heard, he was starting to doubt the coin was mighty enough to protect them.

They couldn't stay in Myr any longer. Even if Illyrio hadn't completed any of his trades, they couldn't risk being in city for a single night.

He boarded his ship while the sun was still above the horizon and went up to the captain. "How long before we can launch?" He asked the seaman. He had left instructions before he left to have the ship prepared to leave incase of emergencies.

"The ship is ready but… I'm afraid that we have a problem." The seaman said glaring towards the hatch which led below deck. "The lass done had enough 'n' scampered. The lads were so busy with preparing the ship that we didn't even notice her go, and that sea-ra… His Highness didn't speak of it to us."

Illyrio paled, glancing back out towards the massive city. One of the ten largest in the known world. Finding someone in such a place, even someone who would stick out as much as Daenerys was a big task, and if they didn't find her before the setting of the sun, they wouldn't be able to set out from port without having their ship seized for breaking the law. Like in many cities, Myr had rules against leaving port after the sun had sunk below the sea.

Dammit, this was bad. What had possessed the girl to leave in the first place?

* * *

Daenerys Targaryen moved through the back alleys of the streets, away from Illyrio's ship, a hood pulled up and her head held low, both hoping not to be found and taken back, and not wanting to be stared at by the smallfolk.

Large bruises added splashes of color to her pale complexion, the swelling around his left eye stopping her from keeping the eye open. Blood dripped down from split lip, despite her best attempts to stop it.

She didn't cry.

Though this time was worse than many of the others, she was used to it, being hurt whenever something 'woke the dragon'.

The humiliation that Viserys had suffered hadn't been taken well, and no sooner did they get behind the closed doors in the ship than her brother burst into an uncontrolled rage. With her being the only real target he had, he had turned on her, hitting her over and over again and accusing her of various things. Saying that she was not trying hard enough for him. That she should be grateful that he, a true Targaryen, a true dragon, would waste his time with her.

But was he a true dragon?

Daenerys had seen it. She had seen Viserys tremble in fear under the Red Priest's gaze. She had seen the effortless way he had been tossed aside and silenced. A dragon does not feel fear. She had always been told such. If that was true, then her brother, her tormenter, was no dragon, and he was no King. He would never sit upon the Iron Throne. He would never be able to find men who would be truly loyal to him.

She had listened to the Boy Priest question her brother and his responses. She had watched as his kind and welcoming expression turned to one of complete disgust, and she understood. She understood that with his complete lack of empathy, her brother could not be a leader. A leader can't just be strong. They had to be someone who people would want to follow. They can't just rule through fear. It was the people who had to choose to support the King. Without people, a King is nothing.

So, she ran. She left the ship and her brother behind and headed to the one place they would never dare follow her, the Temple of the Red God.

* * *

 **I'm not sure if I am thing only one who has noticed this, but what the hell is with the whole "gods both old and new" thing? I know the 'new' is supposed to be taking about how the Faith of the Seven is a newer religion than the Old Gods, but it's supposed to be over 6000 years old according to the canon. So all of you to have a reference to just how old that is, the Epic of Gilgamesh is only 4100 years old. In our world, the oldest civilization is only 5200 years old.**

 **They aren't 'new', they're fucking OLD! Its almost twice the age of Judaism. And three times the age of Christianity.**

 **They also had already invented steel over 12000 years ago (discovered less then 2500 years ago in our world), and yet still were in the dark ages (about a 1000 years ago in our world). Jesus, either their years are only a tenth the length of our years (which would explain why a single winter can last for two whole 'years'), or these people are burning too many of their best thinkers alive. (or maybe they are all just too obsessed with sex to think about anything else.)**

 **The legends of the White Walks would be something like 10000 years old at the very least (probably closer to 12000 since that would be when the White Walkers were first created and I kind of doubt that humanity would have survived too many years of them 'walking' around). How do people even know about it? Has so little happened in those 10000 years that those legends still seem relevant? Can anyone reading this name any important Native American legends, or any of them at all really? I suppose the Wall would be a pretty constant reminder, but still.**

 **Also, why do the people of the North hate immigrants so much? Keeping a squad of criminals at your boarder with instructions to kill anyone who tries to pass seems a little extreme. Can't they try to work things out, maybe help the 'wildlings' so that they wouldn't need to invade anymore, instead of just building a giant fuck off wall and leaving them to kill each other and starve?**

 **Maybe this is where Trump got his idea for building a...**

 **(Pulled away before he can get too political.)**

 **#TrumpTheBuilder**


	4. Chapter 4

Quinna knelt in front of the large open flame that was kept burning within the temple. The sacred pyre was a truly breath-taking sight, the large crimson and azure flames twisting around within a massive hollow statue made of golden brass and shaped into the form of a heart.

Consulting and praying to the flames was a key practice with the Faith of the Lord of Light. However, over the years, the High Priests found herself looking into the flames less and less, disheartened by the visions that came to her whenever she sought answers as to how to help Valorys face his destiny. It didn't seem to matter how many times she tried, or what she did, the vision was always the same.

An older Valorys's body lay dead upon a hill covered in swords, surrounded by untold numbers of the abominations which severed the Great Other, each of them impaled upon one of his blades. He had sacrificed himself, and with that sacrifice, he had saved the world.

Quinna had been raised to believe in one simple truth, that in order to preform truly great deeds, one must make sacrifices. It was one of the principles that the follows of R'hllor believe whole heartedly. Yet, even though she knew that in order to defend the world from the Great Other, sacrifices would have to be made, she felt herself die a little inside whenever she witnessed the vision.

It was just so… lonely.

Upon that hill of swords, that battlefield where he will one day give his life, Valorys did not have a single ally. No one followed him into battle. No one wished to offer him their arms. He died alone. This was what had been meant to be his fate.

Quinna hadn't wished to accept it. She knew that sacrifices had to be made, but she didn't want him to die like that, so completely alone. It was the reason she had first brought him forward into the public eye, declaring him to be Azor Ahai reincarnated. She had cited the miracle he produced as a baby and his knowledge of the forge as proof of this claim, along with the signs of the coming of the Long Night. She had wanted to unite the people behind him and thus avoid the vision she had seen.

She was a fool, and just like all the others who had attempted to break free of the Lord of Light's plan, she was punished for her arrogance. Rather than gathering behind him and uniting, the individuals who had gained power in the name of R'hllor feared the arrival of a true Champion of the Lord of Light. One who would take control and strip them of all of the power they had gained. Through their machinations these vile individuals had arranged for the boy's death, hiring an assassin and placing them within the temple of Myr. The young Valorys lived and through the power bestowed upon him by R'hllor, he killed the assassin, but not before the man's poison had killed his mother.

Quinna had been horrified by what happened, but it was too late to undo what she had put into motion.

Assassin after assassin came for the child's life, and the High Priestess found herself powerless to stop them, but time and time again, Valorys survived. By the time he had reached his tenth names day, he had either killed or captured more than twenty assassins, including six 'Faceless Men', the evil order who used the magic of their many-faced demon idol in order to kill their fellow man in some twisted imagining that assassinations were a sacrament. The Faceless Men even had a developed a nickname for the boy, calling him 'the-one-who-will-never-know-the-peace-of-death'. The last assassin they sent said the name with a look of pity on her face, as if surviving an assassination attempt was like miscarrying a baby, and that Valorys was a barren woman.

Realizing that assassins weren't working, men and women who did not wish to see Valorys's eventual rise to power switched tactics, using defacement and rumors in order to try to turn the followers against the boy. They portrayed him as being a false prophet, claiming he was a servant of one of the demons that sought to lead the people astray.

They used a misunderstanding of the old prophecies in order to confuse the followers. Using the interpretation that the prophecies, the Return of Azor Ahai and the Prince that was Promised, were meant to be referring to the same person, as they both made mention of the return to the Long Night and the return of dragons.

While the prophecy about Azor Ahai only made mention of the feats that the reincarnated hero would perform, the one about the Prince that was Promised was very particular about the man being descended from the royal blood of the Dragon Riders, and that they would be born "amidst salt and smoke".

Valorys was not a child of noble blood, let alone royal blood. He was conceived because his mother had sex with a lesser merchant's son so that the family could get better prices for their sheep's wool. He had been a bastard with the bastard name of Shepherd until it had been changed in order to avoid the implied mark against his character to another name of his picking, Emiya.

Even if the argument was nonsense given the feats that the boy could accomplish, some still held them to be true. While enough of the faithful recognized Valorys for his following to outnumber most other religious groups, not even a quarter of the followers of the Lord of Light outside of Myr followed him.

Quinna had hoped by finding the Prince that was Promised, she could remove the arguments made against Valorys's claim of being R'hllor's chosen champion. She had arranged for Valorys to meet with the Targaryen Prince, hoping that the young Priest would approve of the exiled prince and by supporting him, they could both expand the Lord of Light's influence into Westeros, and remove the doubts that people had about Valorys's validity.

However, he had not approved of the Targaryen boy. Not that Quinna was surprised. Viserys was a vile individual. If it won't for the fact that they had already given him guest rights, she wasn't sure that they would have let him walk away with his life.

Even so, part of her wanted to simply pretend that the boy was the one prophesized. Despite everything, she would have been willing to see him rise to the throne if it meant that they would have the armies they would need when the Long Night came… and if Valorys married the Princess, it would only take a small accident to have R'hllor's chosen champion sitting upon the Throne of Swords.

She knew that Valorys would never approve of such a plan. He had too many principles about how power should be obtained and for what it should be used. It was one of the things she admired about him. She just wished that he would be more pragmatic. While they might indeed bring war to Westeros, they would have more than made up for it with the lives they saved in the war against the Great Other.

The High Priestess gave a long sigh, closing her eyes and reaching up one of her hands to rub at her right temple. She was still recovering from the shock of having a blade drawn on her. It was rare for her to have such an abrupt reminder of her own mortality. Through the veil around her, created by her Lord's power, she felt the true strain of her age.

However, it wasn't just the fear of death that echoed in her old bones. She could still feel the rush of hot fury that had rolled off of Valorys as he faced down the arrogant prince. The raw strength that could only be matched by the men of the Age of Legends.

Quinna was not an expert fighter, but she did know some things about the heuristics of warfare. If one took the total number of people killed in a battle, divided it over the number of people who actually participated in said battle, you could find that on average, only one in every two to three people actually kill anyone in any given battle. The number of people who do kill someone and manage not to get killed themselves is even lower.

If someone manages to consistently manage to slay an enemy in every battle they participate in, over six or so battles, then they are considered an expert warrior. If they can manage five to ten kills in a battle, then they are an individual of incredible skill who would be considered an asset in any war. Someone who can survive fighting twenty or more people in a single battle would be considered a genius, the likes of which only comes once in a generation.

Valorys Emiya was beyond any of that. He was a figure who on the battle field could stand up to the men of legends. In the more recent years, the boy had gone alone to fight against small armies, two hundred swords strong, and managed to come away with not even a scratch. His impact on the battle field could be compared to that of an adolescent dragon. While Valorys claimed that a full army of twenty thousand strong would be too much for him simply because of problems of endurance, he was easily the single strongest fighter in recent history. And he wasn't even close to full grown himself.

Quinna was too ashamed to ever admit it but being around such unadulterated power was… arousing.

She cursed the so-called Blessing of the Red Priestesses, which kept them feeling the heat of passion long after they were too old to bare children. Some of the older High Priestesses in the other cities were over a hundred and twenty years old, and still occasionally slip into bed with young men when the fancy catches them. She would need to find someway of correcting her urges.

She'd just have to go and visit one of the carpenter men in town. Their rough, yet skillful fingers always managed to get the job done, and they were usually weak willed enough for her to simply hypnotize them into not noticing the fact that she was actually an older woman, or that any of it ever happened afterwards.

So, while the sun was starting to set, she put on one of her many red cloaks and left the temple, climbing down its many stairs down into the city before turning on the road that led towards the craftsmen's district.

Myr was one of the three largest cities in what the world knew as the Free Cities, and hard earned its name as the city of craftsmen by having the best makers of just about every type of craft under the sun. From shipwrights to silversmiths, Myr had them all, and the steady waters provided by the bay made them the perfect port city.

However, the craftsmen's district was not a glamorous place. With space in the city being so expensive, many of the craftsmen had to have their workshops double as stores as well as their own homes. The building was pack close together with gasps placed every so often by decree of the city council in order to avoid too much risk of accidental fires spreading too quickly.

Fires did occur on occasion, but they were put out quickly, not by any bucket chains, but rather by the Red Priests and Priestesses praying to R'hllor to control the fire. It was one of the reasons why the Faith of the Lord of Light was so popular in a city where so many fires were needed for people to practice their crafts.

Quinna was almost to her destination when she heard voices coming from one of the side streets.

"Please, just let me go! I… I have somewhere I need to be!" A young girl said, distress clear in her voice. Quinna frowned and moved towards the alley to see three grown men standing around a girl, one of the men had a hand on the girl's shoulder and all three wore expressions of concern.

"Ms., calm down. We just want to take you to the City Guard so that you can get help. I don't know who did this too you but if you just go to the Guard they will help you get the justice you deserve." One of the men said. Quinna recognized the man. His name was Marko and he was one of the faithful who had often come to the temple, along with his wife, in order to seek comfort within faith after their baby passed away in the night.

"What seems to be the problem?" Quinna asked, walking into the alley.

The three men looked over at her and then nearly jumped out of their skin. "H…High Priestess!" Marko said in alarm, looking as though he was trying to decide whether or not to bow. Then he realized what he and his friends were doing and how it might look to an outsider. "I swear, we didn't touch her! We were just trying to help, like any good folk would!"

Quinna smiled at the nervous men. "I gathered." She said, putting them more at ease as she moved forward. "What is the matter child? Are you in need of some…" Quinna started to ask with young woman when she finally saw underneath the girl's hood and saw her bruised face, a face that the Priestess recognized. "Daenerys Targaryen?"

"Targaryen?" One of Marko's friends said, recognizing the name. "You mean this girl is a Princess!?"

"Wait, didn't the Targaryen Prince try to…" Marko started to say but then stopped, giving a glance at the High Priestess. A look of anger passed over the man's face as he clenched his fists. Many had already heard about the Prince's attack on the High Priestess, and only the fact that it was still considered hearsay rather than truth was stopping the faithful from going after the man for attacking a Priestess right after breaking bread. Such an act was considered a horrible crime, worse than rap, murder, or even cannibalism in the eyes of the believers.

Quinna ignored the men, only looking over the girl's face. "Child, what happened."

"I… I…" Daenerys stammered before swallowing down a breath and starting again. "I would like to seek sanctuary in the temple."

"Sanctuary? Sanctuary from what dear child?" Quinna asked, but then something seemed to click. "Did… did your brother do this to you?"

Daenerys looked away, grabbing at her cloak in order to try to hide her face. "I…'d like to seek sanctuary." She repeated, not answering Quinna's question.

Not wanting to push the matter any further, Quinna told the girl that they would offer her sanctuary, putting and arm around her and starting to guide her back up towards the temple.

She didn't notice the looks that the three men had on their faces. "What kind of Godless bastard does that to his own sister?" One of them snarled.

"The same kind of Godless bastard who breaks guest rights and attacks a Priestess." Marko said his hands shaking with rage. "This cannot stand. I don't give a damn who he is. Justice must be served."

The three men went on to gather support, and within the hour there was a mob of over seven hundred smallfolk moving towards the docks, ready to carry out justice.

* * *

Shirou closed his eyes as he listened to the report from the commander of the City Guard. Viserys and Illyrio had been dragged out into the streets and had been executed by the civilian populous. Word of the exiled prince's crimes had spread fast through the city and an angry mob formed, raiding the merchant's boat and dragging them out into the town square and burning them alive. Besides Viserys and Illyrio, five others died, three of the men's sailors as well as two of the people from the mob who had been killed by Illyrio in an attempt to protect himself.

Shirou would not mourn the death of Viserys. The man had been a dangerous individual, not just as an emotionally unstable brat who would lash out at the people around him, but as a political symbol that could be used to start a war that could potentially claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and Illyrio had been a greedy war profiteer who was seeking to benefit from Viserys's mad quest. However, the deaths of those sailors and the smallfolk saddened him. Unnecessary deaths claimed by happenstance.

The City Guard didn't know what to do. They were afraid of trying to stop the mob out of fear of sparking a full blow riot. They didn't want to just let the issue slide, since that was set a bad precedent for future acts of mob justice, however they couldn't make a move against the people responsible. There were just too many people involved.

The Commander of the Guard came to the Red Temple and sought an audience with the High Priests and Priestesses of the temple, hoping that they would admonish the people and discourage any repeat episodes.

"Rest assured that we will make it clear to the people that this behavior is not right." Another of the High Priests promised to the guardsman.

"Hm, I suppose that is the best that we can hope for." The Commander said with a gruff node to the High Priest before he turned to leave. The High Priests and Priestesses were dismissed, told to think about how to best approach the subject of the events with the people in order to help them understand that what they did was morally wrong.

Shirou and Quinna left together. "The law of unintended consequences." Quinna mumbled as they walked along. "Seven more lives to add to the pile of those who have died for my short sightedness. I should have never invited them into this city."

"If you hadn't then Daenerys would still be suffering her brother's abuses, and the man would still be trying to get Essos involved in a war with Westeros." Shirou said, trying to offer the woman some comforting words. "No plan survives first contact with the enemy. The nature of chaos within fate makes it impossible to know exactly how a chance event will shape the future. Things happen and all we can do is try to salvage the situation and save who we can."

Quinna gave a light laugh. "You know, I am supposed to be your guardian, so why is it that I am always the one seeking your advice and counsel?"

Before Shirou could even think to respond, one of the Red Priests came around the corner, shouting in order to get his attention. "Master Valorys! Master Valorys wait!" Shirou turned to the man, a middle-aged individual with a sword strapped to the belt of his red cloak. One of the members of the Temple's pseudo order of knights, the Red Guard, who are sworn to protect the common folk from invading powers. "Master Valorys, the City Guard seized the Merchant Prince's ship in order to stop it from being pillaged. They found something. It… it has to be a sign."

"A sign? What do you mean? What is it that they found?" Shirou asked the soldier.

"It's… it's dragon eggs. Three fossilized dragon eggs!" The man finally shouted.

* * *

Wake dragons out of stone.

A small part of the prophecy of Azor Ahai and one of the elements that would connect the Return of the Warrior to the Prince that was Promised. Shirou already knew he was going to be pressured to try to revitalize the fossilized dragon eggs. He believed he might be able to pull it off, if it could be done through normal magecraft. However, he was cautious about doing so. Even if Shirou did revive the dragons, he had no clue how he was supposed to control them.

While the dragons of this world were not the dangerously intelligent creatures they were in his old world, they were still powerful forces of nature born into flesh. They couldn't preform magic capable of shifting entire mountain ranges, but at the same time, dragon fire could easily be used to destroy entire nations.

The only chance they had to controlling them would be the legends about the Targaryen family's strong connection to the dragons, and while they had extended sanctuary to Daenerys, Shirou wasn't sure that it was a good idea to trust her character just because she ran away from her brother. He needed to know more about her character before he considered reviving the dragons.

"Master Valorys, please see reason. The sooner you revive the dragons, the more time they will have to grow before the True Enemy arrives. We shouldn't put it off." Varus, one of the High Priests who lived within the temple, said as he and the rest of the highest-ranking individuals within the temple followed Shirou through the halls.

"I'm not going to keep arguing with you all about this. I am not going to wake the dragons until I can be sure about what Daenerys would do with them. The girl has grown up around abuse and hatred, so she might be unstable. The dragons could grow to become humanities greatest weapon against the Others, or they might ravage the land to the point where there is hardly anything left for the Others to kill when they finally do arrive." Shirou said sharply, trying to convey the fact that he was not going to budge on this point. "I am not going to gamble millions of lives just because you are all excited about seeing live dragons."

Varus shank down, a bit in shame at having been called out on having his judgment clouded by excitement. Many of the other Priests and Priestesses shared the sentiment. While they understood just how dangerous a dragon was, they were fascinated by the beings that were a living incarnation of fire, the personification of their Lord's power within the world as well as with the prospect of seeing the prophecy fulfilled. In their eyes, it was proof that they were walking down the path that their god had lay before them. Shirou was more interested in making sure that they would be the ones in control rather than the fire happy god. The boy Priest never doubted that R'hllor would sacrifice them all if it meant his victory in the Game of Gods.

Shirou would observe the girl, try to find any indication that she had the kind of mad tendencies of her brother. If she did, then he would work to help her overcome her issues, but he would also make sure not to awaken the dragons. Not until he was sure that she was completely stable. Shirou had experience in dealing with emotionally unstable women and had a reasonable track record of success… somehow.

Hopefully the Priests respect for him would hold up for long enough for him to get a good feel for the girl. Otherwise he might be forced into going along with it just to maintain his control over the temple. While he didn't like the idea of three dragons controlled by a perhaps mentally unstable girl, he could at least put down three young dragons. Roughly fifteen million fire starting religious zealots who believed that making human sacrifices to their god would somehow help. That was a lot harder to deal with.

While Shirou technically held to highest position in the temple, that wouldn't count for much once accusations about his faith started to arise. It wouldn't take much for people to stop trusting his judgment, and the same people how had put him on his pedestal could just as easily take him down.

Honestly, fuck politics.

The others were still following him when Shirou entered the main prayer hall where Daenerys was waiting for them. Quinna had more or less been forced to leave her there when they were called away by the City Guard, but with nowhere else to go, the girl had stayed by the pyre.

Actually, she was a little too close to the pyre, only a little more than a foot away from the opening where the burning coals were housed. Considering the size of the flames, being so close couldn't have been comfortable. Though the girl didn't seem to mind the extreme heat as she gazed into the flames. The girl must have been shell shocked by the death of her brother. Even if he had been cruel to her, he had still been her only kin.

"Lady Daenerys." Shirou said gently, trying to get the girl's attention. She didn't move from her position next to the fire, but she did straighten up at the sound of his voice. "I understand that before everything happened tonight, you had wanted to seek sanctuary within the house of our Lord. If this is still your wish, then we will welcome you. Though if you find it hard to stay in Myr after what happened, we will understand and try to help you make arrangements for the future."

"Thank you… Septon Valorys." Daenerys said, testing out the formal form of address used for a clergyman in the Faith of the Seven. Some of the Priests and Priestesses frowned as it suddenly struck them that the girl didn't know anything about the Lord of Light. In their books it would count as a strike against her. However, Shirou took it in stride, not honestly caring about the religion more than its people.

"In the Faith of the Lord of Light, there isn't a formal form of address for a Priest or Priestess. You can just call me Valorys, or if you prefer, you can call me Emiya. Whatever you are comfortable with." Shirou said, maintaining his gentle manner.

The girl nodded, showing that she understood. "With Illyrio died, I don't know if I have anywhere else to go. I have been surviving on his graces for some time now. Me and my…" Daenerys said, her voice dying off before she could mention her brother.

"I understand. I'll see to it that you will get a room here at the temple and will make arrangements for your brother to have his last rights." Shirou said, not wanting to mention how those last rights might be improvised, as the fire made in the city square hadn't left much of her brother left. Shirou waited, not really knowing how the girl was going to respond. People often responded differently to being faced with the reality of death. But when the girl did speak, it was at all what he had expected.

"Was he really my brother?" The girl asked in a detached tone of voice.

"Pardon?" Shirou said with a small frown. He briefly started to wonder if the girl was going into denial. Trying to make herself more emotionally distant from the relative who's memory would only offer her plan. While not necessarily healthy, denial was a good enough coping mechanism. 'Hopefully it will be good enough for her to have time to heal. I don't want her to hurt herself or make enemies.'

"He had the look of a Targaryen, but if he truly was of the blood of dragons, they how did he burn?" Daenerys said as she started to reach forward into the open flames.

"What are you..!?" Shirou panicked, thinking that the girl had lost it and was going to burn herself. But before he could do anything, she reached down and grabbed one of the still burning coals with her barehand, lifting it up out of the pyre for everyone to see. The Red Priests and Priestesses gasped as they saw her holding the burning ember in her outstretched hand, her pale skin unblemished by the flames.

"A dragon cannot be burned, for fire is their blood." Daenerys said calmly before tossing the coal back into the pyre.

Shirou stared in shock, listening to the Priests and Priestesses around him going into a frenzy about what they had just witnessed. One common line of thought circulating among them. The High Valyrian word for prince was gender neutral.

Shit.

All chances of buying time to make sure that girl was emotionally stable were out the window. The believers saw a sign and they would act on it, no matter what Shirou said.

"Varus." Shirou said, getting the man's attention.

"Yes, Master Valorys?" The Priest replied.

"I want you to get the eggs and bring them to the grand hall. Everyone else, leave. Before we continue, Quinna and I owe Daenerys an explanation of what is going on." Shirou said, annoyed at the obvious excitement in the men and women's faces. "Do what you can to keep the presence of the eggs under wraps. The dragons will take some time to grow up, and I don't want to deal with even more assassins."

"Y…yes sir, of course!" Varus said before bolting out of the room. Many of the others following him at a brisk pass, making off the crush any rumors about the petrified dragon eggs. The threat of even more assassins motivating them to get a move on.

"Dr…dragons?" Daenerys said, her eyes widening. "What do you mean dragons? You have dragons!?"

"No, not yet." Shirou sighed, bringing up a hand and rubbing his eyes. "This is going to take some explaining."

* * *

 **Some people finally confirmed that yes, it is supposed to be ten and three. But since others requested that I just say thirteen to avoid confusion, I'll do that.**

 **I'd like to note that Daenerys won't have gone though all of those things that shaped her as a person when living with the Dothraki, so she is going to be a little on the naive side. granted, she was always kind of that way, since none of the people actually intended for her or her brother to actually rule and so they won't properly educated for the task.**

 **Sorry all you Dany fans, but you have to admit, you have to be pretty stupid to think that breast feeding dragons is a smart idea. Even beyond the fact that they are reptilians and their bodies can't process milk, they are FUCKING DRAGONS. If breast feeding a six year old is disturbing, breast feeding a dragon is downright insane.**


	5. Chapter 5

Daenerys looked down at the cup in her hands, trying very hard to decide if she hated the tea or not. On one hand, it had been a delaying tactic on the side of the young Priest as the boy tried to collect himself before giving her the proper explanation she had hungered for since the moment she had heard the word 'Dragons'. But on the other hand, it was damn good tea.

She hadn't realized that they boy Priest had been the one cooking before, and his cooking was so good that an entire religion could have probably been made around his recipes. Daenerys had heard that Myr's had the worlds best craftsmen in virtually every craft imaginable, save for poisoning and pleasuring, if those could even be called crafts, but she hadn't been prepared for the variety of spices and ingredients that came from being located in one of the three most popular port cities in the entire world.

Hearing a heavy sigh, she looked across the table at her host. His young face had the look of a tired old man as he gazed past her shoulder. "Where do I even begin?" Valorys mumbled, glancing towards Quinna who had also sat down.

"Perhaps at the beginning?" Quinna quipped with a slight smile.

The boy let out a snort. "And what qualifies as the beginning? The conflict eight thousand years ago, the prophecies from five thousand years ago, or signs that started to occur in the last two decades?" Valorys closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "Daenerys, how much have you been told about the lore of the First Men of Westeros?"

Daenerys frowned, thinking about all the stories that she had been told. Nearly all of them had been of the Targaryen family's rise to power. The bards and other storytellers had always been more interested in paying lip service to the Targaryen family in order to please her brother than they were about telling stories that held actual merit. "I am afraid I don't know much about the First Men. Their time was so long ago, I doubt many in Westeros would know more than a handful of the stories."

"True enough. But even if you only know a few stories, I'm sure you have heard of the Others. I believe in the Faith of the Seven they are referred to as the White Walkers." Valorys said, receiving a small nod from the girl. Daenerys didn't react much to the name. While the White Walkers were among the most terrifying beings in legends, they were just legends. Valorys took note of how little the girl seemed to be intimidated by the name. "You might not believe in the legends, but I assure you that the White Walkers were real. And given the signs, we believe that they will return in a few years' time. At least, I hope we have years."

Daenerys paused to think about the stories she knew about the White Walkers. They were supposed to be inhumanly strong, fast, and possess the power to raise the dead to do their bidding, along with many other mystical abilities, mainly in relation to ice. The personifications of Winter, death and the night. Beings dedicated to the total destruction of all life. That was how legend described them. "Won't all of the White Walkers destroyed during the Age of Legends?"

"No, they were not." Quinna said, shaking her head. "We don't know exactly what happened to them, but they weren't destroyed. If I had to take a guess, I would say that the dark god that was the source that powered them, what we call the Great Other, was sealed away with magic. But that magic is no longer capable of holding it back."

Valorys nodded. "While people say that the Age of Legends ended thousands of year ago, the final fading of magic from this world didn't start until four hundred years ago, with the end of the Valyrian Dynasty. Because of this, the magical beings, such as your family's dragons, have simply stopped being born, too starved of magic to survive." The boy Priest said lacing his fingers together in thought. "The signs of magic's deterioration are everywhere. Where in the Age of Legends, a small group of Pyromancers could create a pillar of fire which reached the clouds and shape it into the form of an eagle, now-a-days a group of men of equal skill can hardly light a torch and make it change colors. The White Walkers can sense this. They know that the tools that were once used to keep them down are becoming weaker and more scarce. They will start to assemble there forces soon. Then they will attack, first spreading throughout Westeros, then using the armies they created there to the rest of the world. Either that or they will just black out the sky, starting an endless Winter to harsh for any plant life to survive and then just starve us all."

"The old prophecies say that as the mystic power within the world weakens, they will start to awaken. There will be a short Winter, followed by a long Summer as the Great Other gathers its strength, preparing for its final assault." Quinna said, clearly uncomfortable with talking about it. "This current Summer is the longest in recorded history, and the previous Winter lasted only two short years. The time of reckoning is most likely upon us."

Daenerys didn't know what to say. She could see how serious the two followers of the Red God were taking this. They truly believed that the White Walkers were going to return. But with everything the girl had experienced in her own life, she was having a hard time visualizing what it all meant.

"However, there is still hope. The fading of magic has crippled the White Walkers as well. They are still a great threat, but they are weaker then they might have been. If mankind can unite one last time to put them down, then it is unlikely that they will ever be able to recover. It is going to be a war for survival. If we win, then we all get to live, if we lose, all life on the planet will be extinguished, down to the last rat." Valorys said, explaining just how high the stakes were. "To this end, the followers of the Lord of Light have been preparing, gathering what resources and support that we can. But, a good deal hope and propaganda is being placed on a set of prophecies created roughly five thousand years ago in Asshai, which identify individuals who are supposed to hold great significance in the communing war. One such prophecy is referred to as 'the Prince that was Promised', which describes a descendent of the Valyrian's royal bloodline who will raise up to lead the armies." Valorys gave the older girl a small, apologetic smile. "And after the little display you did with reaching into the fire, you have managed to convince the Most Faithful of our temple that you are the child of prophecy."

Daenerys didn't speak. She just looked down at her cup of tea, trying to process everything that had been said. It felt ridiculous, her being some kind of ruler chosen by destiny. It had always been Viserys who had been meant to rule. It had always been him at the center of everything. She hadn't even dreamed of sitting on the throne herself. All she had wanted was a nice cozy place she could call home. "I don't know if I have what it takes to be a leader." She admitted weakly.

"You don't." Valorys admitted, surprising the girl with his bluntness. "If there has ever been a true born leader who naturally has all the skills and knowledge they need to be a true ruler from birth, I've never met them."

"What about you yourself?" Quinna quipped with a small smile.

"Unique circumstances." Valorys said, brushing the Priestess's comment off. "The skills and knowledge who will need will take time to learn, but we will teach you them to the best of our abilities. So long as you have the proper temperament for it, I don't doubt we will be able to make a passible King out of you, or at least a good Commander."

Daenerys was surprised about how casually the boy was taking about making her a ruler, the thought fact that he constantly said King instead of Queen confused her. But none of it answered her original question. "You still haven't told me what this has to do with dragons? You said you didn't have any dragons yet, but that must mean that you are going to have them, right?"

Valorys nodded. "When they seized Illyrio's ship in order to stop looters from taking advantage of the situation, the City Guard came across three fossilized dragon's eggs. The life inside of these eggs has died due to the weakening of the world's mana… the mystic energy in the air." Valorys said, changing his wording midsentence in order to make his message easier for the girl to understand. "It's another reason why the others are so willing to accept you as the Prince who was Promised. He is supposed to be a Dragon Rider. The appearance of the dragon eggs seemed too convenient to them."

Daenerys frowned but kept her tongue, still being rather intimidated by the boy, however the look on her face spoke volumes about her thoughts. "You are wondering how the dragon eggs could be considered relevant if they are dead, correct?" Valorys said with a small smile.

"Well, yes." Daenerys admitted.

"Well, let's just say that the Promised Prince wasn't the only prophecy." Valorys said with a small sigh, glancing at Quinna with a pleading look, asking her to explain it in his stead.

The Priestess nodded before looking back to Daenerys. "There was a second prophecy regarding another individual who was to appear in order to help in the fight against the Great Other. He was to be the reincarnation of the hero Azor Ahai, the Champion of R'hllor who fought against the Others eight thousand years ago during the Age of Legends." Quinna paused for a moment, letting that information sink in before driving it home in a most theatrical manner. "Valorys Emiya is Azor Ahai reborn."

Daenerys couldn't contain her gasp of shock. In her mind, it seemed to make a sort of sense that this boy was a legendary warrior reborn. Even if her own status as a ruler of prophecy still seemed farfetched to her. Though when she glanced over at him, the boy was adverting his eyes.

"According to the prophecy, I am to perform two miracles. The first is the reforging of Dyrnwyn, which through the retelling of legends had its name changed to 'Lightbringer'. I suppose it was just an easier name for the storytellers to remember. Can't help but feel it is a rather dull name." Valorys joked, earning a small chuckle from the Red Priestess, though Daenerys just stared in slack jawed amazement at the implications of what he had just said. "I am also meant to 'wake the dragon from stone'. The prophecy wasn't helpful enough to tell me how exactly I am supposed to accomplish this. I guess I'll just have to wing it and pray for luck."

The door to the room opened and Varus poked his head in. "Master Valorys, we've moved the eggs into the Grand hall, just like you requested." The man said, looking around the room. Daenerys barely registered the man as her own mind buzzed from what she had just heard.

"Well, it seems like it is time to see if I really can wake these dragons." Valorys said, seeming much less excited about the prospect than the other Priest.

* * *

"I didn't want this to be a damn spectacle." Shirou growled under his breath in Japanese. He had wanted to use the Grand Hall because the sacred flame located there could have been tapped for a little extra prana if it proved absolutely necessary. He should have expected that everyone who knew about the dragon eggs would have come to witness him preforming one of the supposed miracles. This would make things hell of complicated if he didn't succeed on the first try. If more delicate work needed to be done, requiring research and preparations, the faithful might start to doubt. If that came to pass, people might start thinking along lines that would prove unfortunate for some. Such as how much power can you get out of preforming a human sacrifice of someone with the blood of a dragon.

While Daenerys was being offered sanctuary now, that sanctuary could easily turn into her grave if the religious zealots started to do what they do best.

"Is there anything you require, Master Valorys?" Varus asked once they had arrived.

"Maybe. I need to get a good look at these eggs first. We'll see after that." Shirou said approaching the table where the three eggs had been set down.

The dragon eggs themselves were a sight to behold, beautiful scaled stones in a variety of colors that shined like polished gems in the light of the fire. Each of them was almost twice the size of Shirou's head, and even in their weakened state, they gave off the distinct smell of magical energy.

Simply choosing the egg in the middle, a cream colored one with specks of gold, Shirou put his hand on it and muttered 'Trace On' under his breath. He started with just a small amount of his own Od, trying to figure out what kind of state the eggs were in, but quickly found that the egg's own innate magical energy was interfering with his spell and he was forced to put more and more strength into trying to get a grasp of the object over its magical resistance, earning gasps from his audience as the blue green lines of prana became visible on his skin and extending onto the egg.

Even then, Shirou's understanding of the dragons was confused and uncertain. His field of expertise had never involved organic lifeforms, and Phantasmal Beasts were far more difficult to comprehend than most. He couldn't even identify at what stage of development the eggs had been in, or even if they were dead or just dormant. This was something that was way too far out of his league.

However, after a long attempt to analyze the egg, he finally found something. "Heavy metal poisoning?" Shirou mumbled, his mouth shifting into a frown.

"What do you mean poisoning?" Daenerys said loud enough for everyone to hear it. Her own hand was on another one of the eggs, this one black with red markings. She had been drawn to it as Shirou worked and no one had tried to stop her. Though the mention of poison caused her hand to snap away from the egg, as if afraid that some kind of toxin would seep through her own skin from touching it.

Shirou looked around him at the shocked faces of the Priests and Priestesses as well as the exiled Princess. He had honestly forgotten they were there as he had been wrapped up in the problem of the eggs. "The reason why these dragon eggs never hatched seems to be because of heavy metal poisoning. Someone had been slowly feeding the dragon that laid the eggs foods lased with mercury. While the amount of mercury it would take to kill a full-grown dragon would be insane, given their massive size, it became much more concentrated inside of the eggs. It killed the dragons inside the eggs by damaging the development of vital organize. The things died before they were ever alive."

"Are you saying that someone purposely caused the extinction of the dragons within the known world?" Quinna asked him, as if the idea was unthinkable.

"I wouldn't say someone. It would quite a few people in order to pull this off, not to mention direct access to the dragons' food for multiple months if not years. An organization with an individual very close to the Targaryen family. Common groups would have probably tried to use organic poisons, which would have failed due to the dragon's high body temperatures and resilience to tissue decay. Not many people even know about the effects of the full effects of mercury salts, or how it sticks with the body." Shirou said, scratching his chin. "Must have been the Maesters. Either that or the Alchemist. No one else would have been able to pull it off."

"Those… those traitors!" Daenerys hissed, her teeth clenched in anger. "How dare they take advantage of my family's faith in them to poison our dragons!" Shirou frowned, seeing the first signs of hatred from the girl. It would have to be something he would need to address later. A good king cannot have thoughts of revenge. Chivalry demands that one set aside one's own feelings for the good of the people and wiping out the Maesters would definitely cause people problems.

"I honestly can't blame them." Shirou said, shocking the girl out of her rage. "I'd suspect that after the Blackfire Rebellion, seeing the royals turn on each other and use their dragons on the open field, killing tens of thousands and scarring the land, the Maesters probably believed that the existence of dragons was a danger to everyone. I'll admit, even though it is R'hllor's will that we wake these dragons, I am still tempted to smash the eggs because of the threat they represent. Maybe things are different to you, but dragon riders didn't exist until five thousand years ago, long after my time. No one in their right mind would have tried to hatch a dragon egg." Before she could respond, Shirou fixed her with a look. "It will be up to you to prove us wrong. Just remember that going on a rampage against the Maesters would be a strong mark against you. Burn them in dragon fire, and you will only prove them right to fear you."

He could see it in her eyes, she didn't like that Shirou sympathized with the people who betrayed her family, but she wasn't about to fight him on it. Not when he still held all the power. He could only hope that a few lessons on history, the importance of sympathy, and how to let go of one's anger would change her view on things. Otherwise they were making a huge mistake.

"Can you heal them?" Daenerys finally asked, pushing herself forward.

"Hmm, good question." Shirou admitted, turning back to the eggs. "Medicine and herbs exist in order to slowly remove heavy metals from the body, but those have to be ingested. Not much good for us here. A skilled Alchemist could break down the compounds into harmless materials or invigorate the infant dragons to simply continue to develop regardless. But I'm not good enough to make the attempt. I'm not even sure if such people still exist in this age, considering they think that wildfire is something impressive."

Shirou quieted gazing off into space. Wondering just what it was that Rin would have done in his shoes. Would she have known some kind of trick that he didn't, one that could be used to heal the dragons? Her skill with healing had always been almost mind blowing. Then again, she might have simply smashed the eggs into pieces, yelling at him for even considering the revival of such dangerous beasts. It would have probably been that one. He could almost picture it in his mind, her with one hand on her hip, a finger underneath his nose and the look she always gave him when he was making an obvious mistake.

Even if the dragons would be helpful against the White Walkers. A future with dragons in it was a much more dangerous future than one without. Was Shirou really going to do through with this just because this world claimed that they had individuals that would 'ride' dragons?

Unfortunately, he understood the kind of damage beings like the White Walkers could do. He had fought against enough Dead Apostles to know just wait kind of destruction even one such creature can cause. More than likely, there would be hundreds of them. Shirou didn't know how many of them he could fight on his own, he wasn't even sure how the creatures measured up with compared to the Dead Apostles.

Based purely on description they should be fairly similar. However, the Dead Apostles were for the most part overlooked by Giga, who viewed their plague on humanity as a benefit for the world. Shirou doubted that the White Walkers would be provided the same privileges, given the fact that their existence threatens the world's ability to sustain nearly every form of life. Though while the Dead Apostles could only feed on and convert human souls, the White Walkers were supposedly capable of turning any manner of creature into the living dead. An undead horde created by them would be a hard thing to contain.

A war against those monsters was not one that they could afford to lose.

Desperation was a powerful motivating force. Powerful enough for Shirou to seek allies in places he would normally put a sword to. The prophecies promised that the dragons would be useful, and as much as he hated trusting any God, he would have to take whatever advantage he could get.

'If I am still alive after everything with the White Walkers is over, then I will just have to kill the dragons myself. Best to not let them repopulate.' Shirou shook his head. Such things were for the future. He needed to concentrate on the present. "Normal medicine and magic aren't an option. I'll have to go with something a little more extreme."

Taking a deep breath, Shirou placed a hand over his own chest, flicking on his magic circuits as he reached into his own soul for something that had been there as far back as he could remember. Deep golden light formed around his hand as he removed Avalon, the scabbard of Excalibur, from his own being, holding tight to its conceptualized form.

Avalon, the Ever Distant Utopia, was a thing of beauty and power, considered to be the ultimate defense because an attack simply could not exist within it. In its truest form, Avalon was world in and of itself, a world were war, famine, and decease do not exist. If even a scrap of life still remained within the eggs, Avalon should be capable of rejuvenating them.

Holding out his hands, Shirou weaved Avalon over the eggs, drawling them into that perfect world, surrounding them it its golden glow. The Priests and Priestesses in the room started to murmur prayers.

"What… what is that?" Daenerys said, unable to contain her awe.

"A dream." Shirou said, not wanting to go through the processes of explaining. Let them believe what they may about Avalon. The truth didn't matter. Not to a faker like him. The result was what was most important, and in order to achieve his result, he would need all his concentration.

Shirou's control over Avalon might not have been as powerful as its true master's, but with more than a life time of exposure, he was able to draw on a good deal of its innate power. But it was still not be enough. The natural resistance of dragons was rearing its ugly head, fighting off new natural order that Avalon was trying to impose over it, even thought it was something that would benefit it.

Shirou couldn't play the long game, letting Avalon take as much time as it needed. He would have to add his own prana to the Noble Phantasms if he wanted to overwhelm the dragon eggs' magic resist.

 **I am the bone of my sword**

 **Steel is my body and fire is my blood**

Shirou's spell words had meaning more vast than any language could communicate, spoken in both every language ever conceived and no language at all. It was a declaration of resistance against reality itself, felt by the World and any who were adapt in magecraft. Everyone in the hall shifted at his words, as if they felt a hot flame pushing them back.

Even the Princess felt her dragon's blood steering inside of her, though she didn't know what it meant. Her natural aptitude for mystic energy causing her to be more sensitive to the presence of the magic energy Shirou was projecting outwards.

While not as well intoned with the sheath as Saber's energy had been, Shirou's Od helped to push Avalon's power even further, causing the golden glow to intensify until the eggs were no longer visible. He pushed the Noble Phantasm as hard as he dared, not wanting to risk any harm coming to it, and after just a few short minutes, Shirou's Prana receives were nearly completely drained.

Stopping the flow of Od, Shirou retrieved Avalon and returned it is old place within his soul.

"Did it work?" Varus asked, glancing over at the eggs. They didn't look any different than before. However, when Shirou placed his hand on the cream colored one in order to analyze it, he found that its energy was stronger than before and that all traces of the mercury salts had been erased.

Still, Shirou couldn't be sure. "Maybe. The poisonous elements have been removed and the magic inside of the eggs is stronger now, but I'm still not sure if the life inside of it has been fully restored. Nor can I say how long it would be until they are ready too…"

*Crack!*

* * *

 **Someone pointed out that if you consider the Valyrian empire was the Roman Empire, that means that they are only around 400 years after the roman empire, and that it would place the time around equal to 900 AD. And that it was because they relied heavily on magic before the fall of the Valyrian Empire that technology didn't move forward a damn inch in over 10,000 years (over double the length of our recorded history). I'll concede that argument is a sound one.**

 **Not the argument about unpredictable seasons making it hard to keep track of things though, since the long winters didn't actually touch Essos, and being unable to farm for a good two years giving you ample time to do some good old fashion sciencing.**

 **Do you know how much science Newton managed to do living in his mom's basement for two years when his university was closed because of the plague? It was a lot!**

* * *

 **Ending this right here due to possible divergent paths. Now I feel like spoiling shit, so go away if you don't want spoilers.**

 ***SPOILER WARNING* DON'T CONTINUE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!** ***SPOILER WARNING***

 **Shirou either hatches one of the eggs by mistake while the others are hatched by Daenerys, or Daenerys hatches all of them herself.**

 **With the return of magic, Phantasmal Beasts, such as the White Walkers, will grow stronger. With the return of dragons bringing the return of magic, Shirou now faces the fact that his actions may have made everything considerably worse.**

 **Now the question, does Shirou possess the ability to speak to R'hllor(if the Red God exists)?**

 **If so, he could confront the god about having possibly doomed humanity, R'hllor pointing out that without magic's return, the gods would fade away, saying that why should he care whether or not humanity survives if he would disappear either way. Giving a chance to explore R'hllor's view of both humanity and of the presence of Shirou, somehow who he, a good of prophecies, didn't plan for, but is convenient none the less. It could also imply the existence of a Game of Gods, mirroring the Game of Thrones, in which the gods try to win over as many believes as possible.**

 **If not, Shirou is burdened with the guilt that he unknowingly screwed up, opening up a chance for self reflection that could possibly explain how he ended up reincarnated in the first place and what Rin had to do with it. Though this will all be explained sooner or later. Either now, or later when he and Rin reunite.**

 **To everyone who wants more Rin in the story, she becomes more of the focus after this, when she goes with Robert up to see Eddard Stark. With Shirou and Daenerys being more of a side story involving Daenerys introduction to the actual duties of being a king (both in military and politics) and Shirou working her ass off, trying to make a decent future ruler out of her. (Perhaps convincing the girl that she would rather not be a ruler.)**

 **Later on, Daenerys will start to become full of herself because of people treating her like a god send, and Shirou will end up taking her aside and explaining what exactly fate is. Diving into the topic of parallel worlds and how they intersect. Explaining how history can remain hardly changed at all by say, a famous king being born a woman instead of a man. Implying that there are dozens of people who could fit the rule of 'the Prince that was Promised'.**

 **This also involves a confession from Shirou as to him not being Azor Ahai, but also him pointing out that there never was a real Azor Ahai, since any warrior fighting against the White Walkers would have been one of the First Men of Westeros, and therefore a follower of the Old Gods, not of R'hllor. The actions of Azor Ahai actually being the composition of several legends, meaning there are multiple people that the prophecy could have been speaking about.**

 ***END OF SPOILER WARNING***


	6. Chapter 6

Arturia Pendragon was sitting down near the bed of a river within Avalon, the lush green grass like a pillow underneath her as she basked in the warm of the sun in the clearest of skies. Everything from the sound of the birds to the scent of the flowers, all of it was perfect. It was a true vision of paradise. And yet…

The chosen king couldn't help but to feel like it was all empty. The world around her, the perfect utopia, it wasn't real. She had never achieved that dream. Her kingdom had fallen, and Camelot had failed. Being in this place, surrounded by visions of peace and her loyal knights, it felt like a mockery of everything she had tried to represent. Even after all this time, her knights still idolized her. Even in this place, she was separate from them, raised up upon a high horse from which she could never dismount. It made her long for the things that she found after her death, during her time as the Servant Saber.

She missed the close friends she had made then. The people who had seen her as just a person, rather than as the Great King Arthur. The ones who let her have her flaws. The people who had wanted to help save her from herself.

She wished that they were with her now, though she knew that being in Avalon would quickly drive them crazy. Shirou was a person who was constantly motivated to help people, and you can't help people when there was no one who needed help. Rin could last a little longer, but the unchanging world wasn't the place for a genius like her. She would have tried to tear the world apart just so that she could keep growing in knowledge and power. Not that either of them were likely to gain entry into Avalon. She would never dream of implying that they weren't the best of people, they just won't creatures of peace, even if they sought to create it.

Arturia would have been willing to give up an eternity in paradise just to be back with them.

These were the thoughts that plagued Arturia in this world were plagues were not ever meant to exist. Day after day she spent much of her time simply remembering everything that Avalon was not. Remembering purpose which had once given existence meaning. Sometimes, deep inside of her heart, she wondered if she herself couldn't stand this perfect world, or if Avalon had never been a utopia at all, just a different form of damnation. How would the Fae know what a human soul requires to be happy anyways?

"I understand now why he was always so bull headed." Arturia said, holding up her hands in front of her as if to grip the hilt of an imaginary sword. "Shirou, I would give anything to have a reason to live."

A low wind swept over the grass, brushing past Arturia's skin, carrying with it something that the woman didn't have an explanation for. It felt like steady pulsations of prana. That in and of itself wasn't too strange in a world like Avalon, but the thing that confused the swordswoman was that it felt like it was her own prana.

Getting up, she started to follow the trail of prana until she found its source. It reminded her of the description of a desert mirage, the world distorting and correcting itself. It was only over a small area, no bigger than a small table, with something half visible inside of it, moving in and out of focus. It seemed as if Avalon was as confused as Arturia herself, unsure of whether to accept or reject whatever existence was trying to gain entry. Squinting her eyes, Arturia could just make out the shape of the objects.

"Are those… dragon eggs?" Arturia mumbled to herself, recognizing the three stony eggs for what they were. Curiosity and complacency got the better of her and she moved closer. It didn't really make sense for her to be cautious, since death and injury couldn't occur inside of Avalon.

But when she crossed the edge of the distortion and entered into the mirage, she immediately staggered. The same confusion that Avalon was displaying with regards to the eggs extended to her as well, the consciousness of that world finding it difficult to tell whether Arturia was truly herself or if she was part of the force that was imitating her prana. Arturia was pushed towards the eggs, and as she stumbled down onto one of them, her spiritual based body reacted to its physical being. Normally, a physical body would resist and try to force out any sort of intrusion upon it, but within Avalon, such resistance could not take place.

Before Arturia could even fully comprehend what was going on, her spirit was absorbed into the dragon egg, just before whatever force had been trying to push Avalon into accepting the eggs retreated, leaving the world to banish the foreign objects, with the eggs taking Arturia's soul with them.

* * *

Shirou nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the sudden snapping sound. More than just the sound, the sudden rush of prana that had accompanied it had triggered the survival mechanisms inside of his subconscious mind, causing him to almost trace a sword to defend himself before realizing there was no attacker.

Daenerys Targaryen stood on the other side of the table, once again holding onto the black and red dragon egg. The shell of the egg had cracked violently sending small pieces of its scale like stone exterior flying while the rest of the outer shell fell away to reveal a small black reptilian creature in the princess's hands. The pale girl stared at the baby dragon with wide eye as she brought it up to her own face.

"Of course. The Blood of the Dragon." Varus whispered as they watched the dragon trying to climb along Daenerys's arm. The older priest was practically jumping up and down with excitement. "It is said that the Royal family would often place dragon eggs in the cribs with their children. If the egg hatched it would be bonded with the child for life and would prove that they truly were the Blood of the Dragon. There is something about the royal family that allows the dragon eggs to hatch."

"Is that so?" Shirou said, having never heard of such a thing. He was starting to wonder if Varus had an unhealthy obsession with dragons. Or perhaps he himself was just not very well informed about them. Shirou would be a little ashamed to admit that he had fallen behind in his personal research. Nine years' worth of work barely summed up to being three dozen books full of research notes. He really did need to find time to do more research. "If that is the case, then I suppose we just need to let her finish…"

*Crack*

For a second time Shirou's words were cut off, only this time the cause of the noise had been right underneath his own fingers. He drew his hand back as yet again prana pushed out of the egg, breaking free the dragon that lay within it. Shirou looked down at the creamy blue and gold colored egg in surprise as the shell fell away to reveal a second tiny dragon.

The small blue and gold creature shook its head, giving a sort of confused cry as it started to take in its surroundings. Its head moved left and right before one of its bright green eyes spotted Shirou. Then it stopped, freezing in place and just stared at the boy. Shirou stared back, his breath caught in his lungs as a familiar scent passed through his nose. He was sure that it had to be a mistake. It couldn't have been. But as the dragon's prana started to mingle with his own in the beginnings of a bond, Shirou heard a whisper in the back of his mind.

'Shirou?' The dragon said, the message carrying with it all the shock and longing that Shirou himself felt. Once again unconscious of all the eyes on him, Shirou couldn't help but to replay with equal emotion.

"Saber?"

* * *

After things calmed down from the hatching of the eggs, Shirou took Saber with him back to his personal quarters, barricading himself inside so that he could talk to the swordswoman turned dragon in order to try to figure out what was going on. After cooking up some meat for her of course. Apparently, dragons were born hungry. Varus had declared that baby dragons were supposed to eat chard meat, but Shirou figured that Saber wouldn't go for that and just made the best meal he could out of things he was pretty sure wouldn't upset a reptile's stomach, cutting it up into small enough pieces that she wouldn't have to struggle with it.

'Your room is much more decorated than your previous residence.' Saber declared, glancing around as she ate. It seems that telepathic communication didn't suffer from the same draw backs as normal speech when it came to talking with our mouth full.

"An unfortunate consequence of my station I'm afraid." Shirou in the common English of his old world, since it seemed that whatever method had brought Saber to him hadn't instructed her in the local languages.

Living within the city of craftsmen, it wasn't unusual for people to gift him with works of art, and when he was out of the city, people tended to accept them on his behalf, leading to his room looking like a miniature art gallery with how many small status, glass decorations, tables, paintings and other works of art that were in it. Luckily, he managed to convince everyone that not a single thing was to be placed in his workshop, he really couldn't afford to have that place more cluttered than it already was, not when his forge and books were in there.

'Shirou, what exactly is going on? Where are we, and why do you look so young?' Saber asked, wanting to get some answers.

"Parallel world and reincarnation." Shirou said with a short shrug, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

'Zelretch?' Saber said in such a tone as to make Shirou wonder if it was a question or a statement.

"Not exactly sure, but probably." Shirou admitted. "If you want to know the specifics, we are in a city called Myr, technologically it's pretty close to what you had during your life, but politically it is different. Kind of a mess really."

'How so?' Saber asked, curious about the new world she found herself in.

"The city's charter set it up to be separate from every Kingdom, where the Guild Masters run the city, without any sort of nobility. Their basic idea was creating a paradise for craftsmen. In order to gain entry into the city's counsel, one has to become recognized by the guild as being a Master of their particular craft." Shirou explained.

'But the artists aren't interested in ruling, are they?' Saber asked.

"Got it in one." Shirou chuckled. "Some of these people are annoyed by the need to regularly eat and sleep in order to stay alive. Counsel members dropping dead from simply forgetting to eat for too long is actually a serious problem. None of them want to be bothered with the responsibility of running a city, but they also don't want to create a ruling class either, since the city was created in order to get away from corrupt nobles."

'So they turned to a religious order then and simply let a higher power lead them.' Saber inputted, seeming familiar with how things end up.

"Right again. In this case the religious order is called the Faith of the Lord of Light. They worship a fire god called R'hllor." Shirou said.

'Burn the heretics?'

"Why am I bothering to tell you all this when you already seem to know how it goes." Shirou joked though his face didn't seem very humorous. Burning people alive wasn't very funny.

Having finished eating, Saber stretched out her body and crawled across the table towards Shirou. 'You have gotten yourself tangled up in all this, haven't you?' She said in an almost accusatory manner. Shirou had a guilty expression, like a child caught steal cookies. 'Honestly Shirou, you just can't stay out of trouble.'

"I honestly didn't go looking for it." Shirou said in his defense before giving a long sigh. "Promise not to laugh?" Saber tilted her head, wondering just what it was that Shirou had gotten himself wrapped up in this time, but she did nod in agreement. So Shirou took in a deep breath and started his tale.

* * *

It would have been an interesting scene to those unaware of what was going on, the baby dragon that was still only half the size of your average house cat was on its side, one wing stretched out as its head bobbed up and down, horse wheezing sounds escaping its mouth.

"It isn't that funny." Shirou said with a sigh as Saber continued to laugh at him.

'Sorry.' Saber responded, her thoughts clear even though she should have been incomprehensible with the dragon equivalent of laughter. 'So, these people have mistaken you for the reincarnation of their hero and now you are the leader of a cult of fire worshipper and have to play along in order to keep them in check and because what can only be described as a possible end of the world is approaching.'

"That pretty much sums it up." Shirou said with a shrug. "There are going to be some problems in the future since some people seem to understand that I'm just faking it. The religion is pretty evenly divided between people who think that I am their god's chosen champion and people who think I am some kind of demon straight out of the hell that their religion doesn't even believe in. Those who follow me have to accept that their god doesn't want people to burn the nonbelievers alive, which is why I have to play along with the prophecies in order to try to keep people from killing each other."

'I am well acquainted with the world of Medieval politics. Who are they trying to marry you to? Or are political marriages not an aspect of this religion?' Saber asked. While Saber would never have said anything negative about Guinevere, she didn't like the necessity of marrying her, especially given how it all ended up. While any girl made to marry Shirou wouldn't have to worry about finding out that their husband was actually a woman, Shirou's quirks had been the source of a constant headache for the women in his life.

"I wish I could say that they weren't, but they are. However, they are finding it difficult to find a willing match for me due to which hero I am supposed to be a reincarnation of." Shirou admitted. "Azor Ahai was said to have used his wife as a human sacrifice in order to create his magic sword, and one of the prophecies says that his reincarnation will remake the sword. It's difficult to find any family that is willing to have their daughter impaled on a burning sword just to curry favor. I will more than likely be going stag for a while."

Saber nodded her dragon's head in approval though her eyes narrowed a little. 'These prophecies, how serious are they?' Prophecies were rarely good for anyone, but while some were real, others were just given by confused nutters.

"Pretty serious. Out of the hundreds of prophecies written in Asshai's Book of Prophecies, nearly all of them have already come to pass. The only ones remaining describe the coming of the Long Night. Considering that there are no more prophecies after that, we are likely at a historic turning point." Shirou said grimly. "I've been around Rin and Zelretch's talk about parallel worlds enough to know that if we are approaching a historic turning point, then things are about to get out of hand."

'I will have to take your word for it.' Saber said. While she had some general knowledge about magecraft from her years with Merlin and her time as a Servant, something at the level of the operation of parallel worlds was well beyond her scope of knowledge. 'These prophecies you are supposed to fulfill. What are they?'

"Well, they are all in a different language, and some of the meaning could be obscured by the translation since High Valyrian is a little too flowery, but I'll explain it as best I can. The prophecy about Azor Ahai basically boils down to three main events. The first one listed is something about making a star bleed. Not even sure what that really means. The second was waking the dragons from stone. The last is pulling a sword out of a fire, which is believed to be about reforging their legendary weapon, Lightbringer."

'I see. So that is the reason why you decided to use Avalon to awaken beings as dangerous as dragons.' Saber said thoughtfully. 'I am surprised though. How did you manage to get Avalon to work for you at all? While the innate levels of healing are simply an attribute of the scabbard itself, I thought that I was the only one who could use it to access the true Avalon.'

"You are, but they don't call me the Faker for nothing." Shirou said with a smirk, holding up his right hand. "Trace On." At first, Shirou was only projecting out his own normal blue prana, with its usual slightly green tint, but after a few seconds, golden streaks started to appear inside of it. Both Shirou's prana, and this imitation of Saber's own were mixed together. "I traced a copy of Caliburn, saturated with your prana, within the Unlimited Blade Works, then I siphoned off the energy, mixing it with my own in order to let me guide it into Avalon."

'That explains why I felt my own prana coming from those eggs while I was in Avalon. Though I don't recall sensing yours. I suppose it could have just filtered it out.' Saber said, thinking back to when she found the eggs within those endless fields. 'I'm actually a dragon now.'

"Um… yeah… sorry about that." Shirou said uncomfortably.

Saber shook her scaled head. 'No, its fine. While I would have appreciated my old form, I am fine with this. There are a lot of worse things that could have happened.' She said, looking up into Shirou's eyes. 'It's… It's good to see you again, Shirou. I… missed you.'

After being told that she didn't mind being a dragon, the guilt hanging over Shirou's head about his friend's condition loosened up. "I missed you too." Shirou said patting the baby dragon on the head.

'Shirou! I… I'm not a pet!' Saber cried out in embarrassment.

"Sorry." Shirou said, breaking into a fit of chuckles. Chuckles that ended with a rapid pounding at the door.

"Master Valorys! Please come quickly! There is something you simply must see!"

* * *

 **Someone made a comment about wanting to see a dragon Arturia, which led to this. So what do you think?**

 **If it isn't popular, I could just strap it and return to the old plan.**

* * *

 **Just a random theory I'm throwing out. I think that the Many Faced God is responsible for the fall of the Valyrian Empire.**

 **The reason that the empire fell was because the chain of mountains it was built upon were volcanoes and they all erupted at once. We also know that those mountains were being used as mines were the slaves were forced to work. These slavers were the foundation of the faith of the many faced god, and consider murder and suicide to be sacred. So what are the odds that the followers of the many faced god performed a sort of mass suicide ritual in those underground caves, thus triggering the volcanoes.**

* * *

 **Challenge**

* * *

 **(Fate/Stay Night X Katekyo Hitman Reborn!):** Oneesan Reborn: Shirou finds his mind sent back to a younger version of himself, once again being saved from the fire. He grows up with Illya as the adopted son of Kiritsugu Emiya and Irisviel von Einzbern, living a fairly ordinary life, until a strange baby shows up, seemingly determined to get his little sister to join the mafia. Reborn thought that Kiritsugu was going to be the only Emiya giving him trouble about it, he wasn't ready for the son.

\- Snow flames are a thing and Reborn is trying to get Illya to be Tsuna's snow guardian. (Though since the Snow guardian is kind of like the back up boss, she isn't expected to fight. Though if Tsuna loses the ring fights, then she is killed along with him.)

\- Realizing that the only way to assure his sister's safety is to make sure that Tsuna wins his fights, Shirou becomes one of Tsuna's guardians.


	7. Chapter 7

Rin spend her first night on the ship going from her home in King's Landing to the Arbor the same way she had spent every other night in her life, either this one or her previous one. She was draining away her surplus Od from the day into a vessel for future use. In this case it was a sapphire the size of her thumb, one that she had shaped herself in order to maximize its effectiveness as a Mystic Code.

The panel she was using as the medium to transfer her prana over was made of glass, with the script used for the mystery writing into its surface with an alloy made from gold, copper and nickel. Glass was a good base for forming the script on as it both permitted the conduction of prana and completely isolated it, depending on the gradient and curvature of the glass. Or at least it should be.

Glass in the medieval times was low quality, using both a different mixture and a different setting process, result in it being full of discontinuities and bubbles that weakened its effectiveness. Because of that, and the need to mix the High Valyrian script with the Greater Old Tongue's runes resulted in Rin only managing to get a quarter of her old efficiency out of her improvised spell. Whatever magus bitched about the modern world was a moron. Even with all the resources provided to her as a princess and with the money she had gathered from her business ventures, she still struggled to pull together what she needed and the actual travel time of the materials was driving her up the wall.

In her old world, she could have just commissioned for properly shaped glass to be made and had it delivered to her doorstep within the week. Just about any type of mineral could be mail order or found online. Here every single step took months, and everything was of low quality, requiring her to process it herself anyways. And fuck quills. She wished she had a few good ballpoints or pencils. Though she'd give all of that up for some god damn coffee, or some tea that didn't taste like dirty water.

Rin let her mind wonder as she started down at the glass disc. "I'll have to introduce a new formula and production method for glass next. Glass making is a pretty profitable venture I suppose." She said, hardly interested. She wasn't hurting for money. She was one of the richest people in the land, so the appeal of making more money was quickly losing its luster. She hardly knew why she bothered anymore. She supposed it was just a distraction she could fall back on while she was waiting for her research materials to arrive.

Tyrion thought that the sudden focus on improving transportation was because they had already saturated the local market with goods, but in truth it was because she wanted her goddamn orders to be fulfilled in a reasonable time. Waiting three months for a book order was just insane.

The Arbor had jumped on the idea of Rin's riverboats, probably in an attempt to kiss her ass. Not that it mattered. The riverboats were just a short-term project, something cheaper and faster to make than the true solution to her problem; trains. The Arbor will soon be in tears when they find out that Rin's final goal was to destroy their monopoly on trade in the Reach.

The wealth of the Redwyne family primarily came from the trade that came down river from the rest of the Reach, all of which had to pass through the Arbor. It was also the factor that had cannon balled their reputation in the last few years as their family feud with the Tyrells had them dealing less than fair business. While the Redwyne family had money, military power, and a strategic position now, all of that could take a serious hit with the introduction of trains. They would likely lose just about everything, since once the people of the Reach had an alternative to paying out the unfair tole to the Redwynes, they will take it.

Which was why the Redwyne family was perfect for Tyrion's little plan about having a fake betrothed, because in five years' time, when their kid was old enough to marry, the Redwynes would probably be cursing her name.

Either that, or they will just be cursing Tyrion's, like everyone else seems to.

It was a strange phenomenon, as when Rin's techniques of mass production had more than quartered the cost of living inside of King's Land, everyone sang their Princess's praise. Yet when her methods out competed a few family businesses, the people hurt only cursed the Imp. Rin didn't really feel guilty about those negatively effected by her actions, since she knew there was no such thing as absolute good. Any choose made will always have people effected positively and those effected negatively, and by all accounts those who had their standard of living drastically improved by the changes she had made out numbered the people who had suffered from it twenty to one. It was just an unfortunate consequence of progression. It was just strange the way people divided the good from the bad.

Her uncle took the whole thing in stride, just laughing about how he didn't care if everyone cursed him, so long as it doesn't get in the way of his true goal. Her uncle had declared that he wanted to become so wealthy, that he could pay to have a solid gold statue of himself placed in every single brothel in all of King's Land. 'They don't have to be that large. Life sized will do.' Whether he actually wanted to do this or if it was just one of his jokes, Tyrion had been buying quite a few brothels, saying it was a lot more satisfying to walk into a brothel and buy the entire house rather than just one or two whores. Rin honestly didn't care what the man did with the money they earned. It wasn't like she had any right to throw stones.

It was hard to imagine that Tyrion was related to his siblings and father. As much lip service that was done about the craftiness of those scheming Lannisters, Rin found them to be rather dim by her standards and thought that they were little more than opportunists rather than master schemers. Their family symbol should have been a vulture instead of a lion. Tyrion was the only one that Rin would be willing to admit was intelligent, actually being able to create things rather than just taking credit for them. Then again, he was clearly a genetic anomaly, to be expected considering his mother and father were cousins. Again, Rin didn't have the right to throw stones, but it isn't like either her or Sakura could have become pregnant from those nights together.

It was a pity that no one explained to these people about genetic risks and why incest was dangerous. They just thought that the gods disapproved of it, and even that only extended to brother with sister or parent with child. Rin didn't know the exact number for the chance of serious genetic issues when dealing with cousins having babies, but it was somewhere in the ballpark of one in eight, with risks become greater for every accordance present in the family tree. Yet all these inbred noble families all wondered why they kept having so many stillborn babies.

Tyrion had taken to the idea of mass production like a fish to water and had been a good deal of help in designing factory lines for the production of steel in preparation for the creation of the railways.

The two of them had joked about wanting to see the Old Lannister's face when he found out that they had bought out half the iron mines in the Westerlands and had managed to triple their productivity through the introduction of mining carts. Not that they had told the old man about the mine carts.

Still, they didn't have nearly as much iron coming out of those mines as Rin needed to build her train tracks. She could further increase productivity of the mines, but she was hesitating on doing some. She wasn't sure if she wanted to be the one to introduce the concept of dynamite to a medieval world that still depended on the safety of its castle walls. While everything else she had introduced to the world was handy, none of it could be considered a weapon. Not like explosives could.

Perhaps she was just paranoid, or watched to many of Illya's animes where the introduction of futuristic weaponry or tactics always comes back to bite the protagonist in the ass by causing even more war, but she had made a rule to herself not to introduce new concepts of war into the world. Not if she could help it. Not when the greatest siege weapon to date was currently a trebuchet. A mortar would quite literally blow the thing out of the water. Not that even that could compare to what she could do with a few jewels filled with a weeks' worth of buildup prana.

Maybe she should just go for it. People would figure out explosives sooner or later. Maybe it was better to introduce it during a time of peace rather than in the middle of a war.

Rin had been letting her thoughts wonder, the process of infusing prana into her gems being such an everyday routine for her that she could do it will basically on auto pilot. But she was dragged back to reality when the glow from the script and runes of her plate started to brighten at a rapid rate, the speed and efficiency in which her prana flowed through the formula more than tripling. Before she even had time to react and adjust the amount of prana she was feeding the system, the glass cracked and split into four large chunks, discharging prana into her table, leaving a burn in the wood.

As soon as she noticed something wrong, Rin had pulled back, putting distance between herself and the glass plate, reflexively casting a weak shield to protect her from any kind of backlash. The ritual she was doing was so low key and routine that she hadn't bothered to set up safety measures. There should have been little to no chance of it going out of control, let alone in a manner as violent as it had been.

"What the hell happened?" Rin mumbled to herself picking up one of the glass pieces and staring down at the glowing runes in the middle of it. The light died as the prana slowly dispersed leaving a confused Rin to wonder what had caused the sudden change in the metals' absorption of magic. "Great, and know I'm going to have to waste another week gathering the materials needed to figure out what the hell just happened." She growled to herself, picking up the pieces and throwing them into a bag with the rest of her personal belongings that she had taken with her on the trip. "Screw the middle ages. How did anyone every accomplish anything!?"

The Princess stopped in her rant when a knock came at the door. "Dear niece, are you still awaken?" Tyrion asked from the other side of the door.

"Yes uncle, is their something wrong?" Rin said, straighten herself up and moving to the door. Her uncle was there as well as Preston Greenfield, she mentally omitted the Ser, one of the members Kingsguard who had been tasked with protecting Rin during the trip, alongside three other Baratheon men-at-arms to act as bodyguards. While Rin usually didn't keep any regular guard, she couldn't deny her father when she was leaving the safety of the Red Keep. She still wished that it wasn't Greenfield, as she thought the man was a sexist pig, not uncommon in those times, and that he didn't take her seriously, often trying to treat her like a dimwitted maid. It made her want to kick his ass.

"Probably is somewhere. Especially given what is in the sky right now. But even if it is trouble, it is something." Tyrion said, rambling a little.

"Uncle… you're drunk again, aren't you? I told you that drinking on a ship would make you shit faced." Rin sighed, getting a chuckle from the small man.

"Just come up on deck and see if for yourself." Tyrion said gesturing for Rin to follow. Shrugging her shoulders, Rin followed him up the stairs, but no sooner did the light from the night sky touch Rin's skin that she gave a sharp intake of air. Raw prana was beating down from her like strong sunlight against her skin. Her magus' sense telling her that something was generating vast amounts of ether. "I know, breath taking isn't it."

Rin looked up at the sky and her eyes widened. Her mind immediately attempted to try to find a logical explanation for what she was seeing but could find none.

The long tail of a crimson red comet stretched across the sky, the light from it burning far brighter than even the moon, rendering nearby stars invisible and masking even the planet's light. Rin ran through everything she knew about comets and their patterns, but it shouldn't have appeared so bright so suddenly, nor should it be likely for it to arrive at such an angle, appearing right over the northern stars in the sky, not when you consider shape of a solar system. The color itself was impossible in nature, since the types of vaper required to form the red color would never have been frozen in the first place, not without temperatures just a few degrees above absolute zero.

That, along with the prana she felt radiating down from the sky told her that what she was seeing wasn't a real comet, but some sort of phantasm that merely looked like one. "What the hell is it?"

"It's a comet." Tyrion said as he looked up at the light in the sky. "It's been a long time since I have seen one. I was around your age when I saw my first comet hanging there in the sky. Who knows how many wars were fought across the world because of the thing. After it appeared in the sky, the already Mad King became even madder, going from merely violently paranoid to a fire obsessed lunatic. There was all kinds of in fighting across the narrow sea after that comet went through the sky. Why is it that whenever people see a 'sign' their immediate response is to lose their shit?" The Imp said in his both humorous and depressing manner of observation. "And all that was from just and ordinary comet. I am loathed to imagine what people will be making of out this one. …Still, it is rather beautiful, don't you think?"

"Pretty as it may be, let us pray that this isn't a sign of anything." Rin mumbled, though she already had her suspicions as to what the comet truly meant. The return of mana.

She would need to do a hell of a lot more research.

* * *

Shirou sat in his workshop, with Saber curled up sleeping in from of his hearth. As embarrassed as she was about it, her tiny body needed more sleep. The soft purring sound she made in her sleep in place of snores was absolutely adorable.

Shirou was going over the books on dragons that he had instructed Varus to fetch for him. The reason he gave was that soon they would need to start figuring out a way of training the dragons, but in reality, it was to confirm what he already suspected.

He had noticed the mana coming from the sky long before anyone had pointed it out to him, but he had mistaken it for the mana coming from Saber, as her being a dragon had made it so that she literally produced the stuff with her every breath. It wasn't until he walked outside and saw the red 'comet' that he realized where a majority of the smell was coming from, and it made him wonder if he had made a serious mistake.

In his previous world, the disappearance of Phantasmal Beasts had been attributed too the lose of mana in the air following what could be described as the final end of the Age of Gods, in the time of King Solomon. But what if it was the reverse? What if the disappearance of mana was actually caused by the lose of the Phantasmal Beasts that produced it? What if by reintroducing dragons to the world, Shirou had mistakenly pushed it back towards the Age of Gods?

Following this train of logic had left Shirou with a new perspective on Saber's accidental summoning and wondering just how deeply ingrained the fate of this world was.

Shirou knew that the return of mana was going to be harmful for his fight against the White Walkers. The White Walkers, as Phantasmal Beings, could make use of the free magic in the air in order to help sustain them. So rather than fighting against half starved monsters who would be limited as to how many undead each of them could maintain, they creatures would be able to create a vast army once they absorbed enough of the free mana, just like they did in ages past. Meaning they were now much more dangerous than before. Meanwhile, all of Shirou's skills were entirely based around od. The mana wouldn't impower him at all. The rituals used to preform magecraft in this world were based upon mana, but the ones that had survived the test of time weren't exactly up to standard. Interesting as many of the spells were, they were mostly utility, and those that were combat focused weren't of the grade needed to fight against what would likely be high tier monsters.

The return of dragons was going to happen one way or another. The 'bleeding star' had been in the prophecies along with the return of dragons. Even if Shirou hadn't stumbled into this world, the people of it would have probably found a way for it to happen. However, unlike anyone else who might have managed the task, Shirou fully understood the threat that mana posed to humanity. He also had made the connection between its return and the return of the dragons and could conclude that it could just as easily be reversed. But in order to do that, he would have to kill Saber… he… he couldn't do it.

Fate know just what to do in order to stave Shirou's blade. He could change the destiny of this world and protect millions of lives, but in order to do it he would have to sacrifice one of the people he loved with his own hands. He couldn't do it. He was not Azor Ahai.

Saber, not being a magus and being so new to this world, hadn't made the connection between the comet, dragons and mana. Shirou wasn't planning on telling her and he hoped she never realized it. He didn't want her to do what he could not.

There was a knock on the door and Shirou almost found himself cursing. The last thing he wanted right now was more news. The news that day had been going from just bad to worse ever since he had first been told about the arrival of the Targaryen Prince in the morning, though everyone around him was constantly convinced that it was good news.

His irritation melted away when he heard a familiar meek voice from the other side of the door. "Master Valorys, may I speak with you?"

Shirou got up and went to open the door, revealing the young girl standing on the other side. "Maria? Is something the matter?" He asked the child. Perhaps thinking of her as a child was strange since she was actually a year or so older than Shirou himself.

Shirou had encountered the girl just after he had started to venture outside of the city in order to combat bandits and slavers. The girl had been one of the many people captured and forced into slavery. She didn't remember her own past due to trauma, and Shirou was in no hurry to tell her the truth. From what he had gathered from others taken by the same group of slavers, her father had been killed in an attempt to fight back and her mother had been raped by the man who had killed her father right in front of the child before the mother killed herself. The girl was on the verge of death from the forced march across the plains when Shirou descended upon the slavers. He had offered her the same chance that Kiritsugu had given him, taking her back with him to Myr and giving her a place to live.

Shirou wondered if Kiritsugu was as disconcerted about his own attempts to pursue magecraft as he was concerned about Maria's intent to become a Red Priestess. While Shirou couldn't openly condemn the profession, he would have rather she picked anything else. Admittedly there weren't many jobs a woman could obtain in a medieval city, but still.

Maria routinely cut her fair hair shorter than women commonly would wear it, perhaps in an attempt to not look appealing to any man who couldn't control their desires. Many of the other women in the temple thought it was a waste, believing that if she just let her hair grow out she would be a considerable beauty, but she wouldn't have it. She wouldn't even let them cut her hair for her so that the cut wouldn't be so uneven. Most of the physical scarring from her time as a slave became smaller and less noticeable as she grew taller, but the pale ring of skin around her neck from where they had collared her was still easily visible.

Maria looked him in the eyes and Shirou could see the fear in them. "I… I had a vision." She said, her voice shaking as she gripped herself.

Shirou held in his groan as he motioned her to come in and sit down. Not for the first time, he wished for some strong coffee, the kind he used to make Rin.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

 **I'd say around 80 percent of people seemed to want to continue with dragon Saber. Some people were against it, while others suggested changes to the formula with Shirou not being able to understand Saber, so that Saber thought that Valorys was a parallel world vision of Shirou and Shirou only often compared the baby dragon to Saber until they eventually realized the truth.**

 **It was an interesting idea.**

 **I'm going to be doing something of a time skip soon as Rin and Shirou travel towards their next important events. I'm not sure if I am going to show Shirou talking to the girl about her vision and Daenerys mindset of events, or just skipping now and then referencing it all later.**

* * *

 **Lots of people have started commenting about the instructions of trains being unreasonable, since they require an industrialized nature in order to do the quality of work required to make a track.**

 **I am going to say your wrong.**

 **The use of molds, like the ones used in making tracks, in order to shape steel already existed in the medieval era and the idea of quality control and better educational standards didn't start until a little less than a hundred years after the first railroads. T** **he need for an industrialized nation to set up a railroad lies more in the quantity of labor and resources required in setting one down. Both of which can be circumvented by just throwing money at the problem, out bidding all other people for use of labor and resources. Something that Rin would both be willing to do, and easily capable of.**

 **When rushed, it would likely take around 3 or 4 years (not accounting for the time needed to mine all the iron) to complete a railroad that spends across all of Westeros, but it would be doable.**

 **It took 5 years to create a train that went across America, which I estimate to be twice the length of Westeros.**

* * *

 ***Spoilers***

 **The current plan for Shirou's story with Daenerys is that she will look up to him in the beginning as a teacher, but eventually when he talks to her about the nature of fate, he accidentally reveals to her that he isn't Azor Ahai (by stating that even if he himself didn't exist, someone else would have fulfilled the prophecy) and then confesses that in his past life he wasn't a known hero or great ruler and that he was more of a freelancer. After that she starts to question his teachings, due to the negative stigma surrounding sellswords. Finally deciding to break away from him when he goes off to find Rin, attempting to usurp him within the Faith of the Lord of Light so that she can use its army to win her throne.**

 **All along Saber is going to be trying to warn Shirou about how dangerous Daenerys's mindset is, comparing her to Mordred.**


	8. Chapter 8

"This is supposed to be the heart of the North? There is hardly anything here." Prince Joffrey said with unconcealed disappointment as he glanced at the small village outside of Winterfell Castle. They had been riding north for just over a month, heading to his father's meeting with Lord Stark, and the Prince was disappointed to see just how unpopulated the place was. When compared to the large city of Reach or the King's Land, which held up to five hundred thousand men and women, the castles of the North never seemed to house any more than a thousand.

"The population density of the North is much lower than in the southern kingdoms, due to the difficulties involved in gathering the food needed to provide for any sizable settlement. I believe Winterfell is actually one of the larger cities." Lyanna said, having heard her brother's comment. "The story goes that Bran the Builder used his magic to find or create a natural hot spring in the middle of the flat lands, using the heat from the steam to create the world's first glasshouses which allowed for farming to continue even in the harshest winters. Supposedly, back then the hot spring was large enough to produce enough food to feed the entire North, but now it is only a shadow of its former self. Still, to think that a man could have had the insight to build something like that over eight thousand years ago. Bran the Builder might just have been the last real genius Westeros had ever seen… as embarrassing as that is."

Joffrey rolled his eyes, not afraid that his elder sister would notice. Even as she lectured him, she didn't look up from her latest book.

Joffrey would admit that his sister was probably as intelligent, skilled, and strong as a girl was capable of being, thanks of course to her strong heritage, but she was still just a girl, and therefore prone to the weaknesses of her sex.

She was always too fascinated in old stories and fairytales, taking them far too seriously. When their father called on them to play games of war and pour over maps to run simulated war strategies, she always refused to use plans that would cause harm to the smallfolk, ignoring easy siege tactics such as starvation and poisoning water supplies, instead executing plans that were often too complex for normal military leaders to properly follow and would result in unneeded loses for her army. The same went for how she ran business, wasting profits on the working conditions of the people she employed when they had little choice but to work for her anyways and paying far above the average wages.

She didn't have what it took to be a ruler, not like Joffrey did. She was too soft hearted and blind to be able to hold a throne. Not that she could help it. From birth, it was impossible for her to be anything more than a woman. Joffrey knew that all women, not matter how clever they thought they were, were emotional and weak things. His sister and mother were no different in this.

While Lyanna was well loved by the people, love alone doesn't allow one to hold a throne. In order to rule one must be feared. That was the only truth that Joffrey's mother had ever spoken to him. It was better to be feared than loved.

"What is the point of even having these lands as part of the Seven Kingdoms if there is no one up here and the land can't even produce." Joffrey said with a scoff.

"Shut your mouth, boy!" Joffrey flinched as his father had heard his words. "Spread out they maybe, but the North still has its strength, and I'd rather have a hundred of them than a thousand of those soft-headed fools down in the Reach. Hard places make hard men." The King said, giving his son a steady look. "The North is also the best place for good timber and there are herbs and other medicine things that only grow in the harsh north. They do more than their fair share for the realm, despite the hard hand they have been dealt. Don't forget that."

"Yes, father." Joffrey said quickly, struggling to not lower his head. His father hated to see weakness or fear in him, and he didn't want to disappoint.

Robert Baratheon turned his head away from the blond-haired prince and towards the boy's sister. "And what are your thoughts on the north thus far?"

"Hmm… I'd say it's too damn big." Lyanna said after a moment's thought, earning a burst of laughter from her father. Laughter that only got louder as she continued. "For a caravan to take more than a month just to traverse it makes it inconvenient for them to wait for assistance or counsel from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. So, I'd agree with my little brother that right now there isn't much reason for the North to be a part of the Seven Kingdoms, but more because they don't benefit from us, rather than we don't have any use for them. They would most likely be much better off without having their taxes and economy tied to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms."

"By the Seven, I hope you don't tell Ned that one. He might take it to heart." Robert said, struggling to get a hold of himself as he reached down to one of his wine skins. He was disappointed by the watered-down taste, since his stash of wine didn't last him nearly as long as he had hoped, but he felt sure enough that his old friend would have a few bottles they could break open at the welcoming feast.

Seeing that his father was no longer paying him any mind, Joffrey pushed his horse to go a little faster, moving towards the front of the procession, the massive form of his bodyguard following right behind him.

"Looks as though your princely brother is moving on ahead to sulk." Tyrion quipped to Lyanna as the distance between them and the prince increased. "Poor boy wants his father's respect so much. Too bad he isn't likely to ever get it."

Rin sighed as she watched her younger brother go.

She'd never really been that close to any of her siblings. Between how busy she usually kept herself and how much their mother tried to keep them apart, she hardly had that much time to get to know them. Tommen was a cute kid and she got along with him well enough. He enjoyed the stories that Rin would tell him, and she had taken him aside a few times to teach him a little about sword play when their mother didn't want him learning yet. The little boy looked up to her, but she never managed to really connect with the other two.

Rin used to have a good relationship with Myrcella, back before she started to get annoyed by having to constantly play the part of an innocent little girl and started to act out, finding it to work a lot better than the innocent little girl act. Myrcella was very much your standard pretty little princess of a fairytale. She didn't understand or like the way that Rin took control of things, preforming what had always been considered men's work. Rin swore when she wanted to, practiced martial arts and sword fighting, gambled, took part in business and politics, always talked back to their mother, and generally ignored tradition when it benefited her. Just like with their father, Rin didn't fit into Myrcella's story of what a royal family should be like. When a princess was named the 'Queen of Love and Beauty' at a tourney, they weren't supposed to kick the knight off his high horse and claim they just bested the land's greatest knight, no matter how much the people cheered. Rin had tried to make a few peace offerings to capture the girl's wonder, like the music box she gave her for her name's day. The girl was fascinated by and treasured the gift, but she was still uncomfortable around Rin herself.

Joffrey was different though, something much more worrying.

An outside party, without any real knowledge of the boy, would have probably looked at Joffrey and saw what is usually be considered the perfect heir. He was tall for his age, standing at the same height as many boys two or even three years older than him, with a good natural build and strong features and was constantly attentive to his father's words, always wanting to please his father. The problem was that the boy had displayed psychotic tendencies.

In the past, Joffrey recognized his father's passion for hunting and had wanted to prove that he could be a great hunter too. So, a seven-year-old Joffrey went and found the fattest animal he could find in the castle, a large pregnant cat that stocked the kitchens. He caught it, killed it, and cut it open, finding the unborn kittens inside. He took them to his father, expecting the man to be proud of what he had accomplished.

As one could imagine, Robert Baratheon was less than pleased to find out that his son had butchered a pregnant house cat and hit Joffrey across the face so hard that it sent two of his baby teeth flying. It had led to a huge fight between the King and Queen and Cersei swore that if Robert ever struck Joffrey again, that she would kill him in his sleep. The two of them hadn't slept in the same room since, as far as Rin was aware. Granted, she didn't exactly keep track of where her parents were at night, but they did have separate bedrooms at the Red Keep.

Ever since then, Robert hardly looked at Joffrey without glaring at the boy, except for when he was in a particularly good mood. As for Rin, she began to watch Joffrey's movement more carefully and would taunt him into falling back into line whenever he did something stupid, trying to steer him in the right direction. She wasn't sure if Joffrey was an actual sociopath or was merely an idiot child who had rationalized that what he was doing was acceptable. Either way, corrective measures were needed, and if her father's hands were tied and her mother was too much of a brainless tit to admit something was wrong, then she would have to do it herself.

Though Joffrey didn't seem to be in any hurry to correct his behavior and had gained some kind of personal hatred for cats since the events of his childhood. The frequency at which he misbehaved made Rin wonder if he didn't actually enjoy her scolding him. Gods she hoped not. Joffrey was a thousand ways not her type, even if they weren't related. At times he reminded her of Shinji so much that it was a struggle not to rip his head clean off his shoulders.

"Let's just hope that the Starks don't have any family pets they are particularly fond of." Rin said with a sigh, shifting about in her saddle.

Noticing the moment, her uncle cocked an eyebrow. "You hanging in there?" The dwarf asked. He had caught her getting bandages and ointments for her monthly bleedings two nights ago and had been pestering her about it ever since.

"For the hundredth time, I'm fine. Much better than I would be in the carriage with 'dear mother'." Rin said, rolling her eyes. It was true enough. Light body reinforcement magecraft dampened the pain to a bearable level. She was no more sore than anyone else would be after riding for hours everyday for a month. A level of discomfort that was far less than having to share space with her mother. "How about you? How are you holding up?"

Tyrion laughed a little reaching a hand down to rub at his studdy legs. "Even with my costume saddle, I can't say all this riding is good for me. My legs seem to have gone numb." He said his eyes shifting from Winterfell castle to the village beside it. "But I think I know where I can find the cure for that. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll slip away while no one else is looking."

"Just make sure to pull out. The North isn't a very good place to have a bastard." Rin said with a sigh, knowing exactly what the small man was planning on doing. Tyrion laughed and turned his pony away from the rest of the group, hurrying on towards the town. "Is this world completely ruled by its libido?"

Her eyes then turned back towards Winterfell Castle and a slight feeling of anticipation filled her. She had long been curious about Winterfell Castle and the famous Wall, both constructs build by the famed Bran the Builder with a magic powerful enough to allow the walls to continue to stand even after eight thousand years. Even with entire trees sprouting from the walls, the overall structure of the building still held true. The things she could learn from studying those stones. Not to mention the treasure throve of rare books and tomes on the Old Tongue that were housed there. Things that didn't exist in the south due to the Faith of the Seven's past attempts to rid the world of such writings. She had wanted to have a chance to look into these things but had never had a reason to head north and her father would have never let her out of his sight for the two months it would have taken to do a proper research trip.

"Hopefully this will be a productive trip."

* * *

It was one of those mornings for Arya Stark. The kind where she was pulled aside, dressed up like a doll, and told by dozens of people dozens of times that she must not misbehave and that she must try to reign in her unlady-like behavior so that she would not bring shame upon her family name.

The kind of morning that once anyone glanced away for even a second, she sprinted off to hide away from it all with Nymeria, her direwolf puppy. Arya and Nymeria were hidden away from the outside world in one of the many hidey holes created by the trees that grew close to the outer wall. It was a little toasty, huddled up with the direwolf in the middle of the spring, especially in the heavy clothes that were considered the height of 'fashion' in the North adding two more layers to her clothes than she thought was strictly necessary, but even if Arya had run away from Septa Mordane, she knew better than to undo the spiteful woman's work. She was going to be yelled at enough for the dirt on her clothes and how her running had made her hair less tidy. Not to mention the hair from Nymeria shedding the worst of her winter coat.

Though Nymeria was only a month and a half of age, she was nearly as large as a normal hunting dog full grown. Once fully mature, she would likely be as large as a fair-sized pony. Arya had often imagined what it would be like to ride on the back of a direwolf, even though her father constantly reminded her that wolves were not horses.

While Arya was glad that her friend was growing so healthily and quickly, it made it a little easier for people outside to spot them.

"How long are you planning on hiding for?" A familiar voice said from just on the other side of the trees. The girl didn't have to look back to know that it was her brother, Jon.

"Until I hear the horns sound. If I run to the entrance after that, I should still get to the welcoming before the King's party arrives." Arya said, scratching at Nymeria's ear as she explained her master plan.

"Lady Stark isn't going to be happy about that." Jon said as he lent back against the tree.

"I've already disobeyed them, so there is no going back now, I'll be scolded either way. I might as well make the most of it." Arya said peaking out of her little hold and smiling like a clever fox. "If I'm lucky, mother will be too busy to scold me."

"We can only hope." Jon chuckled. "I won't tell anyone I found you if you don't tell. I'd rather not get on her bad side at the moment."

"Deal." Arya agreed.

Out of her siblings, she had always been closest to Jon, even though he was supposed to only be her half-brother. It might have had something to do with how they both had the dark brown hair and gray eyes characteristic of most of the Stark ancestors, whereas most of their other siblings took after Arya's mother. In fact, before Rickon came along, Arya had been the only one of her full siblings to not have been born with their mother's beautiful auburn hair.

Arya had been bullied by her older sister, Sansa, and her friends about her appearance. They would call her Arya Horseface and at times Sansa even accused her of being a bastard rather than her true born sister. As a child, she hadn't understood what a bastard or half sibling was but thought that if both her and Jon were as such, then they should be close, and they remained close even after people explained to her that was Sansa said wasn't true.

"I thought you were excited about the King's visit. So then, why are you hiding?" Jon asked the girl a smirk spreading across his face. "After all, Princess Lyanna is going to be there."

"I am excited." Arya mumbled, pushing her face into Nymeria's fur in order to hide her blush at her brother's teasing. Ever since rumors about the rebellious, sword wielding, business owning, maester-like Princess started to trickle into the North, Arya had started to have a bit of idol worship for Lyanna Baratheon, even though she had never seen the girl herself.

Every time traders or nobles came North, Sansa would speak with any of the women with them about all the fashionable dresses and all the gallant knights that they had in the South, while Arya would ask anyone who would speak to her about the latest news about the things the Princess had done. More often than not they would regale her with tales of the things she would make and the young knights she would duel. Every time Maester Luwin received a new raven, Arya would ask him if it had been about another contribution made by the genius Princess. She would then ask the old man question after question trying to gain a greater insight into the things that her idol had done, until Luwin was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion. Not that the elderly man complained. The discussions helped him wrap his mind around the new discoveries.

Arya knew that she was different from Sansa. She wasn't a natural born lady, and she honestly didn't want to be. She didn't care what the other girls thought of her or even what her own mother thought about it. She wanted to become a swordswoman, not some lady wife who stays at home sewing all the time. While she wasn't allowed to pick up a sword, she had managed to talk her father into allowing her a bow and had practiced with it until she was one of the best shots in Winterfell. It was only her mother's disapproval that stopped her father from allowing her to try her hand at swordplay.

"I don't want to be seen as just another obedient little girl." Arya admitted weakly.

"So, instead you risk being seen as the little girl who is being scolded by Septa Mordane?" Jon said, raising an eyebrow. "Not sure if I follow your logic, dear sister." Arya stuck out her tongue at the boy, though she ended up regretting that when the sound of a horn blowing made her jump and bit it. "Now we're both late! Come on, move!" Jon said, grabbing Arya's arm and pulling her up out from behind the tree. The two broke out into a run, Jon being almost fifteen, six years older than Arya herself, easily outpacing her.

They got to the gate just before the King's party arrived, leaving no time for anyone to do more than give them reproachful looks and hurry them into their spots, Arya standing between Sansa and Bran while Jon moved over to where the servant stood, standing in the shadow of Hodor, the simpleminded giant of a man who worked as the stable boy at Winterfell.

At the front of the arriving group were a few guards, followed by a young boy with fair hair and handsome features in the company of a tall man in black armor who wore a helmet fashioned like a snarling dog. While Sansa's eyes were glued on the boy, Arya looked straight past them towards the center of the procession.

Lyanna Baratheon had been easy to spot, the only young lady who was on horse back and wearing riding pants. She was riding next to a large man with broad shoulders and a thick beard who Arya quickly realized was King Robert. The two were talking openly and seemed completely at ease.

It surprised Arya, the first time she saw the Princess's face. She had been expected to see a young woman, stoic as her mother, someone who was rigid and held themselves with dignity. But Lyanna was relaxed in her saddle and her smile was more inviting than stoic. Even so, she gave off the impression of having complete confidence in herself, as if she didn't have to worry if all the world was judging her because she simply had no faults.

Everyone kneeled as the King's party came to a stop in front of them. A royal page started to run up with a step to help the King dismount, but Robert Baratheon didn't seem to want to wait, simply lifting his leg up over the saddle and letting himself fall down the two feet the ground. The man's sturdy frame absorbed the impact and he immediate walked straight towards Eddard Stark, gesturing at the man to rise to his feet as the rest of the southerners began to dismount.

"Your Grace." Arya's father said to the King, bowing his head.

Robert didn't answer right away, he just looked Eddard up and down, the slight frown on his face making the situation seem a little tense. Then the King looked at Eddard right in the eyes. "You're gotten grayer." The man said with a gruff snort.

Eddard raised an eyebrow at the comment, no doubt noticing the significant amount of gray that was present in Robert's own hair and beard. Noticing the look, the King broke out laughing earning the same from Eddard as the two exchanged a firm hug. Robert than turned to Catelyn and gave her a hug as well, seeming to be ignoring normal etiquette.

"By the Gods Ned, its been over ten years. Where the hell have you been?" Robert said, smiling at his old friend.

"Guarding the North for you, Your Grace. Winterfell is yours, after all." Eddard said, gesturing to the grounds.

The King made a gagging sound. "Ned. Don't give me any of that 'Your Grace' shit. I get more than enough of it at court. I don't want to have to deal with it from you."

As the two talked, the most lavish of the carriages opened up and the beautiful Queen Cersei emerged from within, followed by a young girl who looked to be just a little younger than Arya herself, perhaps eight-years-old, and an even smaller boy, either six or seven.

"Oh Ned, we really do need to catch up on lost time." Robert said laughing about something or other that they had been saying, but then his face turned solemn. "But first things first. Ned, take me to the crypt. I want to pay my respects."

Before Lord Stark could respond, Cersei approached him, offering him her hand. Following etiquette, Ned greeting her and kissing her hand, giving the Lannister queen a chance to speak. "We've been riding for a month my love, surely the dead can wait."

King Robert didn't make any attempt to hide his frustration with the woman, giving her a seething glare before turning back to Eddard with pleading eyes. "Come on Ned." He said, before turning to walk towards the crypt. The Lord of Winterfell gave the Queen a glance before following after his King and friend.

Cersei seemed annoyed at being brushed off and turned away, moving back towards the carriage that was being unloaded by Lannister men. Catelyn and some of the servants moved forward in order to help guide the visitors to where space had been arranged.

"Why does King Robert want to visit the crypt?" Arya asked aloud, not entirely sure who she was asking.

Lucky for her, Maester Luwin was more than willing to answer that question. "His Grace was once engaged to be married to your aunt, Lyanna Stark, before the events led up to Robert's Rebellion. Robert had been truly taken with the young lady, and he had never gotten over losing her, going so far as to name his first true born daughter after her." Maester Luwin said looking off towards the crypt.

"Talking about another woman right in front of his wife, completely inappropriate." Sansa said. "It is as if he doesn't see how beautiful the queen is."

"She can't complain about my father never getting over his old love when she never even tried to get him to love her. Their marriage was never about love and it has never had any love in it." Sansa jumped, not noticing Lyanna Baratheon's approach. "My mother sold her body for a crown. To call her a whore would be an insult to whores everywhere. At least a whore has the justification of needing to sell their body to stay alive and is capable of at least pretending that they love the man."

The group was shocked into silence by the brazen words that the Princess had used to describe her own mother. It wasn't the kind of language you would expect from a young lady, let alone one talking about their own mother.

Lyanna turned to face Maester Luwin, spotting the chain around his neck and smiled. "A Valyrian Steel link, if I am not mistaken, that means you studied the greater mysterious of the world. A rarity among maesters."

Maester Luwin shook himself a bit before answering. "That is correct. It is traditional for maesters serving in Winterfell to be learned in the old lore, though I can't say I have ever found a use for it. The Giants and Children of the Forest are all dead and gone, and so is magic."

"Is that so. Well in that case, you must have a lot of books on the subject of the runic language of the Greater Old Tongue and of the practices of First Men, correct?" Lyanna asked.

"Yes, we do have such books in our library." Maester Luwin admitted, surprised that the girl famed for her practical work was interested in such things.

"Perfect." Lyanna said, her grin growing wider. "Would you mind showing me to them?"

* * *

 **In her own perspective chapters in the first book, Sansa admits to accusing Arya of being a bastard half sibling instead of her full blooded sister. She was a brat and a bully. Even after everything she went through, I never pitied her.**

 **I thought that Arya hero worshipping Rin would be cute, and I'm half planning on having Rin take her, and perhaps Bran, on as apprentices.**

* * *

 **FOR FUCK SAKE! GREEN HOUSES!? GREEN HOUSES WERE INVENTED 8000 YEARS BEFORE THE CANON STARTED!? YOUR MAESTERS SUCK ASS!**


	9. Chapter 9

Benjen Stark was seated at the welcoming feast for the King and his company at one of the many lesser tables alongside his nephew, Jon Snow. He and the boy were talking about the Night's Watch, with Jon showing interest in someday becoming a Black Brother and Benjen himself trying to talk the boy out of it.

However, both of them kept glancing up at the head table, to where the rest of the Starks and the Royal family were seated. Jon was ever weary of Catelyn and couldn't help but glance nervously at her whenever the two of them were in the same room. Not that Benjen could blame the boy. His brother's wife had never hidden his distaste for the boy's existence. Though Benjen didn't know if that meant that Ned had confided in her and told her the truth about his birth and she feared for what would happen if that truth ever got out, or if his brother had not even trusted her with that knowledge.

Ned had never even told Benjen the truth about his nephew, but the man was perceptive enough to figure it out. The narrative of how after wedding Catelyn he found a beautiful whore while at war who he broke his marriage vows for and loved enough to keep their bastard, simply didn't add up. For one thing, Jon was older than Robb by about two months. Robb had been conceived on Catelyn and Ned's wedding night, so any child made after Ned's wedding, when he went off to war, should have been younger, not to mention the laughable idea of Lord Eddard Stark ignoring his vows.

No, Jon Snow was not the bastard son of Ned. He was Lyanna child. Born to her and that accursed dragon prince who was responsible for everything. Lyanna must have asked Ned to keep him safe with her dying breath. That was just like their sister, always getting her brothers to do impossible tasks for her. Ned placed a stain on his honor by claiming the boy as his bastard and put a further strain on his new marriage in doing so, all for the love that he had held for their sister.

The boy's life was always complicated, and yet Jon Snow knew nothing of it.

Benjen knew these things, yet the reason why he was looking to the main table was different. He was wondering what he would say to the King.

When the Night's Watch heard about King's visit to the North, they had sent Benjen to try and speak with him about strange happenings in the even further North. However what was there to even tell? Strange disappearances could hardly be called strange. The Wildlings acting up was also something that people would call normal. The uncomfortable feeling, like the world itself was watching you? Everything that was wrong could be explained away as paranoia.

Benjen had been with the Black Brothers for a long time, so he could feel that something was up. But they simply lacked any kind of undeniable proof, and while King Robert was a lot of things, superstitious wasn't one of them. He was actually downright skeptical. He would probably just laugh if Benjen said that things beyond the Wall were strange. Even Eddard wouldn't believe him without something more substantial than the whimperings of deserters.

Benjen could request assistance from the King in simply securing the Wall from Wildling raids, but what few untrained men and spare supplies they could get from doing such would not be enough. Winter was coming, and what they would need is an army. He needed a way of convincing the King to support them in venturing beyond the wall and figuring out just what was going on.

"Excuse me." Benjen tore his eyes away from the head table only to see the young Princess Lyanna standing close to their table, dressed in a grassy green dress. "You are one of the Night Watch, are you not? I'm sorry if I am being rude, but we rarely see any down in the capital."

Benjen looked the girl up and down. While it wasn't uncommon for children to try to ask him questions, it was usually young boys, not girls, and especially not noble girls. Beside him, Benjen's nephew froze like a statue, his jaw clenched, and his eyes widened. "Aye, I am Benjen Stark, Captain of the Rangers, at your serves, Lady Lyanna." Benjen said with a bow of the head and feeling only slightly awkward about using his dead sister's name to refer to another. Honestly, what was Robert thinking?

"A Ranger? That means you are among those who venture beyond the Wall, correct?" Lyanna asked the man, an eyebrow raised with interest.

"That is correct." Benjen replied.

"Interesting. Would you mind if I join you? I have some questions I would like to ask about the lands and people beyond the Wall." Lyanna asked the Black Brother, though she was already taking a seat before he had a chance to reply.

"I am not opposed to the company. However, I think you are expected at the head table." Benjen said, flicking his eyes to where the rest of the royals and Starks sat, only to find some of them staring right back.

"You will find that I rarely do what is expected of me." Lyanna said and flashed him the most charming of smiles. "In fact, I'm quite famous for it."

Benjen eye twitched, and he wondered just how much alike her name's sake this Lyanna Baratheon was.

* * *

Arya hardly contained a pout when she saw Princess Lyanna sitting down with her brother and uncle. As Lyanna had insisted on first seeing where their Maester kept his books on the Greater Mysteries of the World before changing out of her riding clothes, she had arrived late to the Feast, something that was already consider shocking for a lady of her status, then rather than joining them at the high table, she went and sat down with one of the Black Brother instead.

If Arya had ever done such a thing, Septa Mordane would have likely fainted from the scandal of it.

"Seems my daughter has decided to pester Ben with questions. Can't say I'm surprised. She's been asking questions about the Wall ever since we first decided to head North. She was becoming more and more annoyed that all we could give her was hearsay." King Robert said with a chuckle, taking another gulp of wine. "She's read every book we had on the legends of Bran the Builder."

"Are you not going to call her to join us?" Arya's father replied, his expression still stoic.

King Robert snorted. "Ned, you will learn to just stay out of the way whenever little Lyanna's decided there is something that she wants. I'd sooner go to war with the Dragons all over again than try to stand up to her fury. Just let her do as she pleases. There will be more than enough time for you to meet each other after she's satisfied her curiosities. Besides, I doubt she would like to listen to the two of us prattling on about the good old days. Though maybe your children would enjoy hearing 'bout all the trouble you got into back when we were both hosted together in the Eyrie."

"All the trouble I got into? I think you are starting to misremember things." Eddard Stark said, raising an accusatory eyebrow. King Robert broke out into laughter and a small smile spread across the Lord of Winterfell's face.

It was rare for anyone to see Ned even this obviously in a good mood. Seeing as he was in such a good mood, Arya decided to risk a question. "Father, can I join them too?" Arya asked, not being able to think of any less direct way of saying it. To try to help her chances she tried to sound of innocent and pleading as possible. It was the same tactic that she would often employ on her brothers so that they would let her watch their sword fighting lessons.

She knew that this method of attack was rather ineffective against women, and that she will still probably be scolded later by her mother and the Septa later for her speaking out of turn and general unladylike behavior, but the beauty of this unladylike action, is that she couldn't be called out on it in front of the King without the people calling her out also performing a social faux pas of their own.

The only argument against her going would be to call attention to how protocol stated that she must eat with the family when welcoming guests. And the first rule about protocol is not to talk about protocol. …The second rule has something to do with rat poison… or something… Honestly, Arya didn't pay attention past the first rule. After all, if you know about the first rule then you know that them telling you all the other rules was against the rules and you have to pretend that you won't listening.

The Septa practically glared daggers from where she was standing nearby, having hardly had the time to scold Arya for running off that morning, but her hands were tied. Even before Ned Stark had a chance to respond, the King laughed about how 'spirited' Arya was and told her to scamper on. Even with the King's permission, Arya glanced to her father, waiting for the man to nod his approval before getting up and made a sloppy attempt at a curtsy before moving down towards the table where her brother, her uncle and her idol were sitting.

* * *

Jon Snow was… very confused.

He had been surprised when Princess broke etiquette in order to sit down with him and uncle Ben, and he only become more surprised from there. To be honest, she didn't act like a noble young princess at all.

The way she held herself showed complete confidence without having her seem like she was trying to imitate a statue, like other noble ladies. She was relaxed, lively, and very forward. It was as if he was speaking to a much more graceful version of Arya… or rather just listening too. Jon had yet to find where he had misplaced his tongue.

Shortly after sitting down, she started to ask Benjen questions about the Wildlings.

Uncle Ben had started with the usual talk about how the Night Watch guarded against the Wildling raids and how the Wildlings were a constant danger that needed to be watched. After which Princess Lyanna Baratheon asked him to kindly stop feeding her horse shit at get to the actual information about the Wildlings.

That was when her questions became more… focused.

She asked him about how the Wildlings interacted between each other.

She asked how they acted out their raids and what their priorities were; whether they focused on killing or simply getting the supplies and legging it.

She asked how they handled a defeated tribe and what happened to women and children.

She asked about what their diets were like, and about migration patterns of the groups.

She asked about leadership and organization of groups.

She asked about the general attitude that the Wildling's had for their situation beyond the Wall.

She asked how many of the tribes kept written records and how many of them had learned the common tongue.

Then came Benjen's answers, and Jon found himself once again shocked as the responses the Princess received painted a much different picture of the Wildlings than he was used to hearing. Less mindless and barely human savages and closer to desperate thieves and bandits, with a sort of twisted code of honor of their very own. He had never even heard the term 'Free Folk' before, which was apparently what they called themselves. Actually the more he heard about them, the more they sounded like the Iron Born.

While Jon still hated the pirates, especially Theon, he wasn't about the say that they were evil. Not inherently anyways. Hard places made hard men. Though while the Iron Born could have technically just gotten on their boats and found a land actually capable of supporting life and never having to raid people ever again, they actively choose to stick to their barren soil. The Wildlings didn't even have that chance. The Wall stood between them and any land that could feasibly be farmed.

Jon nearly jumped when a finger was pressed into his side and his precious little sister not so kindly requested that he move over. Jon did as he was told, shifting over so that Arya could squeeze herself onto the bench between himself and their uncle, directly across from the Princess.

Arya had nearly choked on her own tongue as she greeted the Princess and had blushed with Lyanna replied with familiar words and a kind smile, insisting that Arya didn't need to stand on ceremony would her. Arya then listened quietly as Benjen continued to answer questions.

"I see. Most of it is as I expected, but it's nice to have my theories confirmed by witness accounts." Lyanna said with a sigh. She had shown herself to be mildly disappointed when Benjen explained that while some did know how to write the old runes, that most of their writings were used for messages and more modern treaties of sorts. They did not have very old writes as if it did serve an immediate purpose and help them survive, they didn't tend to lug it around, and the work required to copy over aging carvings was more effort than it was worth.

Most of the culture was kept alive through storytelling, though considering the Wildlings claimed to have long memories, and the history they could remember was surprisingly accurate, Benjen suspected that they actually did have some records of the past hidden somewhere, likely carved into the walls of caves.

"Tell me, what's with the interest?" Benjen finally asked after it seemed like the girl was done with her questions. "Its rare to find anyone who thinks of the Free Folk as being anything but Wildlings."

"Let's just call it curiosity." Lyanna said, turning her attention towards her drink. "I suppose I was just wondering what the chances of pacifying them were like."

"Impossible." Benjen said with a shake of his head. "They would never agree to work together with the Seven Kingdoms. They have nothing but contempt for kneelers."

"While that is true, I doubt they even understand why." Lyanna said in a rather smug tone of voice. "'Khol' the Old Tongue's word for kneel had two meanings. The first being the to kneel before a ruler, while the second is to kneel down to sow the soil. A more correct translation for 'Uk domu khol' would be 'we do not sow', not 'we do not kneel'."

There was the sound of spluttering as Theon Greyjoy heard this and nearly choked on his food. The familiar Iron Born motto being applied to the Wildlings had shocked him more than just a little.

"The Wildlings first refused to become part of the old Kingdoms because they didn't wish to take part in farming, as they viewed clearing the forests for farmland to be blasphemy against the Old Gods. They were in fact on both sides of the Wall until they simply died off on this side due to their descendants choosing to give up the wanderer lifestyle." Lyanna explained a confident smile on her face as she slowly nodded along with her own lecture. Arya was eating it up, listening to every word that the older girl said. "They have shown in the past that they are more than willing to kneel if it is for their own survival. Their have after all been Kings Beyond the Wall, and their little tribes have their own form of leadership. If legends are correct, then the very first King Beyond the Wall even fought alongside the Stark King against a common threat. The only reason they are so 'wild' is because no one has even tried to placate them. Not in over eight thousand years. Two thousand years before the Andal ever even reached the shores of Westeros: the people who they supposedly refused to 'kneel' to."

Benjen clicked his tongue and looked thoughtful. "Even in the Night Watch, hardly anyone can speak the Old Tongue. I'm surprised you know it well enough to stop that double meaning. And you are right, that there hasn't been any real communication between the those north and south of the Wall in over eight thousand years." Benjen complemented. "I still doubt that they can be reasoned with. They are too set in their ways."

"Do you know what the funny thing is about people who are set in their ways? Sooner or later they just grow old and die and if their children don't feel like keeping it up, then it dies with them. No tradition is ever more than two or three generations from disappearing." Lyanna said with a dismissive shrug. "Do you know what the most important part of controlling a land post-conquest is? Besides dividing up the territories so that they don't cooperate against you."

Benjen frowned. "Can't say I know anything about conquering places."

"It's simply really. Breeding." Lyanna said with a slight smile at the confused looks she got. "Whether it was the First Men and the Children of the Forest, or the Andals and the First Men, or any conquest in human history across the map, after the war, the mixing of races helps to alleviate the tensions between the groups. As the line between conquered and conquerors blurs, it stops seeming like it matters so much anymore. Children of mixed bloods act as a bridge between the groups and people start to just accept the differences aren't really all that big. The problem with the Wildlings, is that they have been left alone for eight thousand years. There is not a single drop of Andal blood north of the Wall, and they don't recognize anyone but themselves as being descended from the First Men. No mixed children to bring things to the negotiations table. They know just as little about us as we know about them."

Benjen screwed up his face, probably thinking hard about what the girl had just said. Jon had to admit it made some sense, though it was hard to think that if a people didn't change in over eight thousand years that they would ever change.

"You're suggesting that they Night Watch start taking Wildling wives and orphans, aren't you?" Benjen said. "When all the men of a tribe a wiped out, the women and children tend to accept whoever killed them as being their new tribe. You think that the Night Watch could to this rather than leaving them to starve, and then by doing so create a bridge between the people."

"Yes, that's right." Lyanna admitted. "What do you think?"

"No." Benjen said flatly. "Forgive me milady, but there is a good reason why the Night Watch are not allowed to take wives, and it isn't for honors sake."

"You are talking about the legend of the Night's King, correct, in which a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch was seduced by a White Walking and ended up becoming one himself, in the days shortly after the Long Night." Lyanna said thoughtfully. "Surely that isn't a problem now. It has been thousand of years since the last time anyone has even claimed to having spotted any White Walkers. …Or do you think that they still exist?"

Benjen opened his mouth, closed it, looked over at Arya and Jon before mumbling. "Better safe than sorry. Some stories are more than stories."

Lyanna didn't say anything for a few moments as she looked over the Ranger's face. Then, seeming to decide that this was the most she would get out of him, she shrugged. "So, what can you tell me about Winterfell?"

As Arya enthusiastically started to do her best to answer any sort of question that the Princess had about their home, Jon was more distracted by their uncle.

He started to wonder what the real reason why his uncle was so adamantly against him joining the Night Watch and just what the Night Watch was anyways.

Suddenly he wasn't so sure he really wanted to join. Perhaps he should think it over a little more.

* * *

"You're retreat has been cut off and your light cavalry has been destroyed. In areas with limited visibility, don't over commit to the charge." Valorys said as he moved around the pieces on the map as yet enough simulated war strategy was going very poorly for Daenerys. Last time she had hesitated too much as the enemy had managed to regroup and counter attack. The Red Priest started to reset the pieces into their starting positions on the map. "Again."

The exiled Princess had to do her best to stop herself from crying. She was so tired.

They had been out at sea for more than a month, heading towards what the faithful of R'hllor insisted was a mission from their god to liberate a city that was being subjugated by an evil cult. It seemed as though shortly after the comet appeared in the sky, several Red Priestesses had visions of a city being consumed by darkness and people with blue lips and had taken this to mean that they were supposed to go and do something about the Warlocks that lived in the city of Qarth.

It was Valorys who suggested that it would be good experience for the soon to be 'King' to learn how to gather and organize the troops, give orders during battle, and see to the recovery of the city after the Warlocks were taken care of.

Valorys seemed to be under the impression that a King did absolutely everything. Daenerys was made to order the organization for goods and services required to get an army half way across the map. Everything from food to transportation was left up to her, with Valorys only offering some small advice. Instead she had to figure everything out herself.

She had hardly been allowed to sleep during the five days that they had spent gathering supplies and troops, making deals with the merchant's guild for the use of their larger ships, as well as several other deals with several other city officials, and creating a play for budgeting everything. It seemed like she couldn't go five minutes without someone wanting her to consider something and her head buzzed from the strain of reading so much Low Valyrian.

She never thought she would end up missing those five days, because after they had actually gotten on the boats, her training for when she would be King began.

On top of lessons on history, logistics, etiquette and warfare, Daenerys was also made to practice swordplay, archery, and assist the sailors with running the ship. She was being treated more like a squire rather than a Princess.

Valorys said that if she expected to be able to lead people, she must understand them. A king who doesn't understand their people cannot lead them. She would complain that no one could be expected to do everything that she was being made to do but considering that Valorys did everything that she did and more, it didn't seem like a valid argument.

The Princess was started to think that the boy Priest was absolutely insane. Also skilled, knowledgeable, wise and powerful, but completely insane. This was evidenced by the way he acted towards his dragon.

While people might have snickered at Daenerys for calling Rhaegal and Viserion her children and her trying to breast feed them at one point, but even that seemed normal compared to how Valorys acted towards Saber.

While Daenerys had followed Varus's advice and began to feed her children slightly burnt meat, Valorys only fed Saber the kinds of meals that one would present to a King, and even then, only on special occasions. Things like grilled shark fins with roasted nuts, ginger, and a sort of sauce of some kind which Daenerys didn't know the name of. It was no wonder that Saber ate three times as much as her siblings, the way Valorys spoiled her. Daenerys wondered where the little dragon put it all and was worried about how they would be able to feed it once it had time to grow. At least, she was, until she noticed Valorys jumping off the side of the boat with a harpoon only to return a few moments later with a few large fish. Apparently, this was where the shark came from too.

Valorys insisted that Saber was a girl, even though dragons didn't really have genders. He also spoke to it in a language that no one else understood, claiming that it was an old language that was lost to the world. When he was doing so, there was such an unmistakable happiness in his voice that you didn't need to understand what he was saying to know that he was strongly emotionally attached to the blue and gold dragon. She had also seen him one night reading the dragon a book. He had claimed to be trying to teach her how to read.

Daenerys could understand to an extent, since she could feel her own bond with Rhaegal and Veserion. It was just that Valorys had been the one most uncomfortable about the subject of dragons before, saying that dragons were extremely dangerous beings and that if it wasn't for his god's orders, he would have smashed the eggs. Then Saber hatched, and he's attitude suddenly flipped entirely and he sleeps with her in his bed.

How was it that he was even able to hatch the dragon's egg anyways? It was supposed to require Targaryen blood in order to wake a dragon's egg, but Saber hatched for him.

At first, Daenerys thought that he might actually have been descended from the Valyrian royalty himself, but she was told about his bastard origins and that there wasn't a single drop of noble blood in his veins. So why was he able to wake a dragon?

The only explanation that she could think of was that he was the chosen of R'hllor. That the God of Fire was able to convince the incarnations of fire to bond to the boy. Maybe he and the Targaryens had more in common than she thought. Wasn't it said that the very first dragon riders had been nothing more than shepherds?

Fire is my blood. That was what he had said. It was so close to her own family's motto, fire and blood.

When he had first said those words, her skin had crawled… not in a bad way though. It was a difficult to describe feeling. The feeling of an impossible flame pushing away all the cold that was held by the world.

The men from the Age of Legends really were something else.

"Dany, hesitation is the enemy. If you take too long to decide your moves it might be too late to act at all." Valorys said, misinterpreting the girl's dazed state for her spending far too long to decide on a her strategy.

"I… ah…" Daenerys spluttered as she looked down at the map. She was so tired that the colors and shapes of the pieces all kind of blurred together. Something that Valorys noticed as the girl started to shift around her pieces only to accidently move two of the enemy's units.

"…We will continue this tomorrow. Take a short rest. I'll be waking you before the sunsets for your diplomacy lessons." Valorys said with a small sigh, beginning to put away the map and pieces.

"A short rest?" Daenerys said, not being able to help herself any longer and giving a small whine. She knew that a Princess shouldn't act as such, but she felt like she was on the verge of collapse. "Can we not call it a day early? Just this once?"

"Whether it is in times of war or peace, a King never knows when they will be called on to perform their duties. Rest when you can, and be glad for however much you can get, but know that it is never guaranteed." Valorys said.

"You are going to work me to death." Daenerys complained.

"No. I will make sure to only work you half to death." Valorys said with a small smile. "Any Lord in the Seven Kingdoms goes through a similar training. Only theirs is stretched out over fifteen years. You have one month to learn the same and more. Did you think it would be easy?"

Daenerys didn't say anything. She knew Valorys would be displeased if he heard her say that it should be easy, because she was simply born to be King… Queen… whatever. The first time she had said that, he had responded by apologizing for underestimating her and said that they would skip the basics since she was such a natural talent. That was when he blindfolded her and the only information she could get about the position of the pieces had to come from what other people told her of them.

Any time she acted arrogant, he would treat her like a wise, old Maester would treat a stubborn child who thought that they knew everything, by showing them just how little they really did know. Daenerys decided to just shut up after that and keep her grumbling in her head.

"Every moment you spend standing here pouting is a moment of rest wasted. Unless you don't actually need that nap." Valorys teased her. Daenerys didn't even say goodbye. She just turned on her heels and started towards her quarters, fearful of losing what little chance of rest she was being given. Maria, who acted as a mixture of bodyguard, attendant, and sparing partner for the Princess, followed her out.

'She isn't ready.' Saber said, in her matter of fact way as Daenerys left the room. 'She knows how to read and her numbers, but she knows nothing about leadership, and people honestly expect her to lead them?'

"I know. She was raised only with the intention of being married off. No one bothered to teach her how to be a ruler, and from the sounds of it, they didn't teach her brother it either." Shirou said with a sigh. "However, it isn't impossible to cram an entire lifetime's worth of training into a few weeks. I did it."

'Your case was different. You understood just how difficult your goal would be to achieve. This child sees becoming King as her destiny.' Saber said with clear disapproval, her tail flicking against the ground in aggravation. Saber hadn't exactly just pulled the sword for the stone and become King without any prior knowledge or skills. She had spent her younger years learning everything she could about leadership and chivalry as a Squire before she ever took up the holy sword. She had put blood, sweat and tears into becoming a Knight worthy of the kingdom. To hear someone say that they should be king because it was their birth right, regardless of qualifications, training or temperament, reminded her Mordred. While she didn't hate her 'son', feeling as though some of the blame for how things turned out lay on her shoulders, she still would stand by her decision in saying that Mordred was not fit to be king.

"She's older than you were when you became King." Shirou reminded Saber. "Though you're right, she has listened to too much talk about destiny and birthright. She doesn't even seem to see the fact that all of the things that she is learning being hard for her as being a problem, since fate will work things out for her as long as she pushes forward."

'And perhaps because she has the great Azor Ahai reborn to fight for her.' Saber jabbed. 'When one has dragons and a man from the Age of Legends on their side, how can they be anything but victorious.'

"Such a mindset won't help us at all when the Others come." Shirou pointed out. "No matter how powerful dragons are, or how strong I am, in order to defend against an army, you need an army. Otherwise they will just go around us." Shirou sighed. "Mankind's most dangerous enemy is coming, and the person supposedly chosen by god to lead us through the disaster isn't taking it seriously enough."

'At least she isn't in a blind panic.' Saber commented.

"True." Shirou nodded in agreement. Daenerys did take the news that the world was possibly coming to an end, and it was up to her to help save it, rather too well if you asked them.

'…We'd forgive you, you know.' Saber said suddenly.

"Huh?" Shirou said in confusion, looking over to where the little dragon rested. Saber turned her face away, as if embarrassed.

'Sakura, Rin and I… we'd forgive you if you had to marry Daenerys in order to gain leadership over the Seven Kingdoms so that you can save this world.' Saber mumbled though their mental link.

Shirou gave a sad smile as he went over to Saber and started to pat her head. "I know. But I would rather not end up in a relationship with anyone I couldn't be honest with, and I would never be with anyone I didn't love." Shirou told her. Saber trembled a bit at his words and Shirou could now feel her embarrassment.

"W… well… You should still keep the option open! In times of war, sometimes political marriages are the best way to avoid unnecessary conflict and… and…!" Saber's mental voice stopped as her mind seemed to go blank, and small jets of steam came from her nostrils.

Shirou couldn't help but chuckle at Saber's reaction. "I suppose while I have this break, I should continue on my research." Shirou said, getting up and stretching a bit.

'Perhaps you should get some rest as well while you can.' Saber adviced him, after she regained her composure.

"I doubt my schedule with ever clear up. I need to further my research whenever I can." Shirou told her as he went to grab a large pile of notes he kept in his quarters. Page after page of small script all dedicated to trying to reverse engineer a very particular mystery from a very particular Noble Phantasm; Andvari's Ring.

While the legends talk about the ring that turned Fafnir into a dragon, it was actually the entire pile of gold that was cursed, all of it working together to form the final result of turning the common dwarf into a massive fire breathing behemoth, as well as causing the deaths of many a hero even after the dragon was dealt with. And like with many other mounds of treasure, some of the pieces were weapons.

A sword, one carrying Andvari's curse, was stored within Shirou's Unlimited Blade Works. And if there existed a way to turn a dwarf into a dragon, then there might be a way of using a similar mystery to turn a dragon into a woman.

While Saber didn't seem to consider herself too terribly inconvenienced by her current body at the moment, Shirou wanted to find a way to return her to her human form.

'Alright, but don't work yourself to death on my behalf.' Saber told him.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure to stop when I'm only half dead."


End file.
